


Mer's Moving City

by vaguely_concerned



Series: Mer's Moving City 'verse [1]
Category: Howl no Ugoku Shiro | Howl's Moving Castle, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Complete, M/M, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-28 06:07:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 119,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguely_concerned/pseuds/vaguely_concerned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The SGA/Howl's Moving Castle AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which John goes on a mail run and meets a wizard

The day that would provide John Sheppard with his first run-in with a wizard dawned like they all had the last half year or so - barely at all.

This close to the polar circle the sun barely made a dent in the darkness for most of the winter, and it created this weird inversion of how light and dark worked anywhere else in the world; shimmering snow throwing brightness against an unrelenting black sky. Even when he flew that blackness seemed to hem him in. The skies down here were inscrutable – you had to disregard your own senses and trust in the instruments. He could do most trips without really showing up, just letting the reptilian hindbrain of automated responses do its thing, keeping half an eye on the plane’s instruments and the white, featureless expanse beneath. Sometimes it was like he didn’t have to be there at all.

John kind of liked it here.

 

\----

 

He tried to remember that as he walked through the crowd that was pouring into the town square of Skarby, second southernmost town in the world and all-year deep freeze. There was no telling where all these people were coming from - normally the place gave the impression of having a population of about twelve fur coat-dwelling men and women of indeterminate ages and three kids made practically spherical by their many layers of clothing. Today there was quite a turnout, though, a small restless army topped with fur hats all gathering around the three people in uniforms who were handing out fliers and making rousing speeches.

“You’re not safe down here just because you’re far away!” the uniformed woman bellowed, holding a flyer over her head for effect. “The enemy has been forced to retreat, and they’re marshaling every last sorcerer they can get their hands on! How long do _you_ think it’ll be before they get desperate and come here to mine your natural magical resources while you look on defenselessly?”

“The army needs every able-bodied man to prevent that from happening!” the uniform closest to her joined in, breath steaming before him in the crackling cold. “It’s your _duty_ , to your town and to your country!”

“’Scuse me,” John muttered, edging his way between a wall and a huddle of people flipping through brightly colored pamphlets in the relative illumination of a gas street lamp. “Whoops, sorry, ma’am, let me get that - no trouble at all.”

“Victory is certain within two months, and you now have the opportunity to be part of it!”

John would have felt a lot better about the whole thing if at least one sorry bastard in the crowd would start to ask questions along the lines of ‘Well, if victory is _certain_ and they’re coming down  _here_ , how come you need us to go north with you?’, but on the whole everybody seemed cautiously proud that their backwater hamlet was finally being acknowledged by the bigwigs in the capital.

He kept weaving through the crowd, muttering apologies and taking the deserted back alleys wherever he could. The frost clung to the walls of the buildings on either side of him, climbing like cobwebs across windows. By the time he reached the inn his nose and ears were all stinging from the cold. When he pulled open the door and the bell tinkled, the heat from inside wafted across his face, accompanied by the smell of spilled beer and walls so thoroughly glazed with nicotine that one breath was like vicariously packing away half a pouch of tobacco.

“Ah, Major,” beamed Klaus the barman, taking a break from polishing what John suspected was the same glass he’d held the first time they met, though it was hard to tell since it hadn’t gotten any cleaner in the meantime. “There’s a rare sight. You get a look at that whole mess out in the square?”

John closed the door behind him. A few of the harried-looking customers sitting close to the corner with the fireplace looked up at the bell, then turned to their drinks again. “Haven’t seen that many people in one place for months,” he said, taking off his gloves and shaking his hands to get some warmth back in them.

“Ah, you should’ve seen that time a couple of years back when I was dumb enough to offer free beer on Midwinter Eve. This thing don’t have a patch on that; thought I had a bloody stampede on my hands. You here to pick up the mail?”

“Yessir,” John said, sliding down on a bar stool and scratching his neck. “Both for the base and the civilians up at the research station.” He pushed the official note from Sumner over the counter.

“That we can do for you. Hey, Marie! Go fetch this stuff out of the mailbag, would you? Now, Major, aren’t those flying machines you guys’ve got a bit too fancy for use in the post service?”

“Just doing what I’m told,” John said, throwing in a small grin. “Not much else to use ‘em for up here, really. Most of them are old models, too, you have to be careful not to take sharp turns or they’ll act up.”

“Eh, I ‘spose that’s fair enough. Better’n those poor idiots out there who’re thinking of joining up to get the posh uniform, anyway.”

John kept the smile on his face and nodded in that innocuously agreeable way that could keep up your end of the conversation for hours if you were talking to someone like Klaus.

“Though there might be something to what they’re saying,” Klaus mused thoughtfully as Marie the barmaid emerged from the backroom with the first bundle of letters, scowled at her oblivious boss and went back in. “We’ve had an awful lot more wizards and witches and alchemists and whatnot through these parts the last year or so.”

Since John had transported most of those sorcerers of varying descriptions to the research station himself without catching much in the way of nefarious intent, he just nodded again and said: “Trying to find out about the magical fields over the poles, right?”

“Oh, that’s what they _say_ they’re doing,” Klaus said, with the grim authority of the born conspiracy theorist. “But who knows what they’re actually tinkering with down there. I’ve even heard it said that people have seen the moving city up by the border.”

Over in a dingy corner one of the bar’s patrons choked on his drink and coughed copiously.

“Bless you, sir,” Klaus said. “That stuff’s supposed to go _down_ your throat. Anyway, as I was saying, they reckon the wizard Mer is trekking the city up here for his own dark reason. What someone like him would do somewhere like this is anyone’s guess, though.”

Some last trailing coughs came from the corner as Marie stuck her beleaguered face out from the backroom. “Klaus, when I said you’d better tidy up I wasn’t joking, all right? I can’t find nothing back here.”

“But for god’s sake, woman, there’s a system to it!” Klaus dried his hands on the apron stretched over his expansive midsection and edged his way towards her. While they scuffled through the heaps of papers and assorted oddities that lined every horizontal surface in there, John plucked at one of the loose strands of the wicker beer mats on the counter. By now he should be mostly thawed, but he still felt cold and stiff under his coat.

“Hey, you, excuse me.” Somebody tapped him on the shoulder. He turned a bit to find a guy about his own age looking at him with something like accusation. Judging from his flushed face and the beer stains all down the chest of his slightly inadvisable brown shirt, it was the same man who’d had a disagreement with his drink before. “What was that you were saying about a moving city?”

John blinked at him. “Do I know you, or...”

“I highly doubt it, since I’d never been to this herring-infested icy dump of a town before today.” As some of the closer customers sat up and scowled in their direction, the guy edged a little closer to John. “So no, we probably haven’t been introduced.”

“It’s just that we don’t often get new people in these parts,” John said slowly. “Especially in the winter.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Gee, really? I can’t imagine. I suppose ‘chilblains chic’ isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Now, much as I’d like to discuss population statistics and - oh, I don’t know, local life skills like polar bear wrestling - with you, Mister...”

“Major, actually.”

The man made a face of irritable incomprehension. “What?”

“Major John Sheppard, at your service,” John drawled, pulling off a lazy mock-salute. “And we don’t have a lot of trouble with polar bears, seeing as they tend to hang out on the exact opposite end of the world.”

The guy lifted his pointy chin in a gesture that suggested that he considered John’s existence some god’s way of testing his charity and patience both. Hell, this was more fun than John had had in the last year and a half put together, unless you considered feeding smoked herring to the occasional penguin the height of entertainment. “How nice for you. What I wanted to -”

“Not many bugs either, come to think of it. Good thing too; I hate those things, they give me the creeps. Got penguins, though,” John mused, just for the hell of it, ticking off on his fingers as he continued, “penguins, seals, those big fuckers who kind of look like the seal’s ugly-ass cousins, you know, with the teeth...”

“I...” The man’s eyebrows made a spirited attempt at joining his receding hairline up over the widow’s peak. “I - sure, yeah, whatever. I was wondering about that thing you were talking about with the barman just now - a moving city?”

John shrugged. “Bit of a local legend.”

“Nothing legendary about it, Major,” Klaus said, coming out from the backroom and triumphantly slamming the second bundle of letters down on the counter. “Say, who’s your friend here?”

Looking more and more like he was regretting getting involved, the guy moved restlessly from foot to foot and hesitated. “Rodney McKay,” he said finally. “Doctor Rodney McKay, PhD, PhD.”

“Hah. See, they’re so posh up there in the big city, they put extra letters behind their names just ‘cause they can afford ‘em. Well, my good doctor, the moving city isn’t some myth, oh no. Too many people - dependable people, too, people who aren’t normally ones for being excitable - talk of having seen it. Now, what it really _is_ , that’s another thing entirely. They _say_ it’s a city, with twisting spires and lights that lead people astray in the mist and towers that reach right up into the clouds, though no one knows of a sorcerer strong enough to get something that big to move. Makes you wonder what they’re experimenting with in that academy of theirs, huh? That wizard Mer’s got to be something special.”

“Hm,” McKay said noncommittally. “So you were, uh, you were saying it’s been spotted around here recently?”

“Sure, yeah, only a week or so ago, up by the province border. Most likely the wizard wants to have a crack at the magical field before the other sorcerers, so it’s got to be only a question of time before we catch a glimpse of him too.”

McKay apparently didn’t have much in the way of a poker face; he immediately paled to an unhealthy shade of gray and swallowed heavily several times. John couldn’t help but wonder if McKay had managed to get himself in trouble with the wizard, which was widely known to be a common cause of any number of personal problems, from painful death to a sudden onset of amphibianhood. From what little John had heard about the wizard in question he wasn’t the patient sort either.

“I see,” McKay croaked. “And... they’re _sure_ that’s what they’ve seen?”

“Kind of hard to mistake it for anything else, don’t you think?” John said.

“Well, it’s been a while since anyone’s seen in up close but as the Major says, it’s the sort of thing it’s hard to miss.” He turned to John, leaving McKay to twitchingly absorb this. “Was that all, by the way? Nothing to get some warmth in you before you set off again? No winter night special?”

“Thanks but no thanks,” John said, picking up the letters. “I’ve heard about your winter night specials and I kind of need to be able to fly in a straight line.”

“You know what, I think I’m going to join you,” McKay declared, grabbing his - violently, eye- searingly orange - coat with a speed John wouldn’t have accorded someone of his somewhat stocky build.

“...okay?” John said, at the same time as Klaus said, with deceptive lightness: “Not before you’ve paid for your beer, you won't.”

“What are you - ” McKay started to snap, before apparently zoning back in to reality and wincing. “Sorry, of course, hang on...” He patted various pockets on his person until he found a pouch and blindly threw some coins out on the counter - unless he’d had a full keg all by himself, he tipped Klaus with a week’s wages. John waited for him because in the end penguins only had so many tricks and he’d seen them all by now.

“So, uh, where are you headed?” McKay asked as John opened the door to the perpetual twilit cold outside. “Because if we’re going in the same direction, we might as well...” He threw what he must fondly imagine to be a discreet look over his shoulder, as if expecting wizard Mer to hide out behind the door, ready to spring out at first opportunity to endow McKay with a new gastronomical preference for flies.

Figuring that getting rid of him would be more effort than it was worth, John shrugged. “Sure. I’m headed for the landing pad out by the back of the old railway station.”

“Sure, sure, perfect, right on my way,” McKay said, patently not listening to a word of what John had just said as his head swiveled back and forth to scan every shadowy corner for vengeful wizards. The concern was probably misplaced; while most sorcerers were petty, as peaceable as active volcanoes and had planet-size egos, they were all too dependent on the support of the government not to come down hard on one of their own who used magic against civilians. When a bunch of sorcerers came down on you hard, you tended to stay down permanently, not unusually as far as six feet .

McKay stayed just a little too close as they walked, his shoulder brushing John’s every now and then, especially when they veered into the darker alleyways. When they reached the town square he relaxed a little. He blinked at the crowd. “Wow, I wouldn’t have imagined there were this many people on the entire continent.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought at first too.”

“Probably descended from those miners who came here back in the day.”

“Yeah.”

“You’d think they’d somehow caught a clue and gotten out of here by this point, though. Two hundred years should be ample time to figure out that there’s no gold here and hey, we were never meant to subsist on icicles and... pickled herring, or whatever it is these guys manage to dredge up from between the ice flakes.”

“Mhm,” John said, because at least towing a nervous talker around meant that he didn’t have to listen to the recruitment speeches. As soon as he noticed the uniforms and pamphlets McKay went quiet, though, a crease appearing between his brows.

“Well, that’s... dumb,” he said after a while. “You know, it’s depressing how none of them seems to be able to marshal enough brain cells to question the fact that the people claiming to be the winning team are somehow desperate enough to recruit from this frozen, sorry-ass continent.”

John glanced over at him. His wide, slanted mouth was pulling down at one side, making his whole face lopsided. “They’re not used to this sort of thing. I guess they’re just proud to be let in. Throw in some nationalistic rhetoric and bright colours and they’re convinced.”

“I expect they’ll discover cynicism soon enough when their numbers are decimated. What’s the average age around here anyway, sixty? Not exactly the prime cut of the nation, is it.”

John shrugged. They made their way around the fringes of the crowd, McKay tensing up more and more as they approached the zone where the illumination of the gas lamps barely reached.

“So you don’t often get visitors around here, then?” McKay said, with all the grace of a four-year old fishing for the possibility of candy.

“They get a fair number in summer. For the southern lights, you know.”

“What I _mean_ to say is that there hasn’t been anyone in the last few days? Just passing through, or...”

“Wouldn’t know about that, I haven’t been off-base a lot lately.”

McKay made the face of someone who’d just received confirmation of a terminal illness. “Great. Just. Great.” He studied the shadows with renewed paranoia, keeping close enough that he nearly walked into John several times.

“Do you mind?” John asked when he got tired of having his heels absent-mindedly stepped on every fifth meter or so.

“Not at all,” McKay said, the toe of his boot grazing the side of John’s.

“What are you looking for, anyway?” John asked, stopping. McKay walked into him and then stumbled back to a more socially acceptable distance. “You know there isn’t a sorcerer in the Empire who’d dare to go off on their own these days, right? The leaders of the Academy would rather incinerate every rogue agent without trial than take the chance of having someone running around with their own agenda.”

McKay’s expression scrunched up in an all-face wince. He let out a laugh that veered safely into the hysterical range. “Yeah, okay, you know what, Major warding-off-inquisitive-penguins-is-as-perilous-as-my-life-gets, let me tell you, you don’t even know the _half_ \- “ His gaze moved up over John’s shoulder. His face fell like so much ill-judged soufflet. “...oh crap.”

Prompted by the abject smallness of his voice John looked over his shoulder - and the shadows coalesced and drew up and stretched out for him, tendrils of darkness wriggling and winding and crackling through the freezing air -

in a span too short for thoughts John fired into the worming mass three times, ramming his left shoulder against McKay to push him back and behind him as he did. The thing was ever-moving, quivering like a mass of insects swarming around each other, and somehow a darker darkness than the shadows that surrounded it, like a hole in his vision, a blind spot oozing up the wall in a parody of vines digging into the cracks in the plaster. The shots had no apparent effect; the shadows curled up undeterred, long smoky coils snaking towards their feet over the trampled snow. John fired off another shot down at them - they flinched back momentarily at the sharp glint from the muzzle but that was all; it won back the distance in no more than three seconds.

McKay grabbed his shoulder. “That’s not going to work, come on, we’ve got to get out of here before the real trouble catches up!” John let himself be dragged along, out of the reach of the moving shadows and down the alley

“ _Real_ trouble?” he demanded incredulously, as in his peripheral vision the shadows began crawling their way into the cracks between the exposed bricks of the opposite wall.

“I don’t have time to explain!” McKay yelled, already at a full-out sprint towards the end of the alley. “Just keep up and - just trust me, okay?” He was rooting around in an inner pocket of his coat as he ran, fishing out some indeterminable objects.

 _Sure_ , John said in the privacy of his own mind, saving his breath for running, _I’m in the habit of putting my life in the hands of total strangers, of course I trust you. It’s only a great big shadow monster appearing out of the blue, how silly of me to worry._

Still, he kept himself between McKay and whatever that was back there, on the somewhat shaky reasoning that McKay seemed to have at least a nominal idea of what was going on, which John himself definitely didn’t. They reached a corner and McKay raced arbitrarily down the alley to the left, hands working feverishly on something John couldn’t make out.

McKay was chanting something under his breath beside him and for a wild moment John thought he was summoning a spell or something, before he realized that it wasn’t very likely unless the words to the spell went along the lines of ‘Oh shit oh shit oh shit, not good, not good at all, this is very very bad, oh god, we’re dead, dead men running...”

“McKay!” John roared, throwing himself forward to shove McKay out of the way of a sign post he was apparently too engrossed in whatever he was working on to notice, “what the _hell_ are you - ”

“Shut up, can’t you see I’m working here?”

John threw a look behind them and felt his eyes bulge; the entire alley was being swallowed up by the boiling shadows, moving like a fucking wall towards them. “McKay, now would be a very good time for you to - ”

“Almost there, just make sure it doesn’t catch up with us on open ground or we’re toast - ”

“This is not that big a town! There are limits to how many alleys we can - ”

Something caught onto the back of John’s uniform coat and snagged, bringing him to a sharp unforgiving stop that slammed the breath out of him. In one dizzy teetering moment he felt something cold and hard and thin trying to wriggle up under his clothes, mindlessly wrestling its way towards bare skin -

“Major!” McKay grabbed his shoulder and heaved. John could _feel_ the moment when the shadow thing stretched past its breaking point and snapped. He fumbled around behind himself until he caught the end that had stayed on him and tossed it away. Before he started running again he glimpsed the severed shadow lying on the snow, writhing like an earthworm cut in two.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” McKay squeaked, staring at him with saucer eyes.

“It’s okay, just keep going and - _fuck_.”

They rounded a corner and came face to face with the very solid-looking wall at the end of a cul-de-sac. A quick scan of the area revealed that there was no other way.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” McKay said faintly. Behind them the shadows were eating up the distance; ninety meters, seventy, fifty... “Okay, okay, let’s just go anyway, I’m almost done here - ”

John followed McKay until they both stood with their backs to the wall, John looking in vain for some kind of handhold or ledge they could make use of, McKay still hard at work with the thing in his hands. It was the barest, sheerest dead end they could have gotten themselves into, no windows, no lamps, no convenient crates or trash cans nearby. Beside him McKay was letting out a stream of fervent swearwords, his fingers slipping and working with almost superhuman swiftness.

“It’s coming,” John found it necessary to point out as the shadow again reached the fifty meter mark.

“I know,” McKay hissed, fingers flying. Was that string he was handling? What the hell would string be good for against something like...

“I only mention this because if you’re done or there’s some way to keep it back for a while, this would be the ideal time to - ”

“Five more seconds, I just need - keep it back, shoot at it, whatever, just - “

“I thought you said shooting it wouldn’t work!”

“Oh, so you’d rather just stand here and - there!” He was halfway to thrusting his hand out right at the moment the shadows caught up.

A whip of darkness shot out and hit McKay straight in the chest, tumbling him over. Whatever he’d been holding fell from his hand and clattered against a spot of snowless tile under the roof. John didn’t have the time to dive for him before the shadows were on them.

The darkness enveloped them like oil, like a swarm of insects, like a thousand raven’s wings rustling past John’s ears; the gun was yanked out of his hand and all he could do was cover his face with his arms because he could feel them skittering against his closed eyelids and then his mouth - he curled up with his face tucked towards his chest and fumbled blindly for McKay; he thought he could hear snatches of his voice but it was impossible to know where from in the building roar of the shadows massing in.

His sense of direction started going to pieces; for all he knew he might be upside down, drowning in an ocean of dark and cold and that was funny, hadn’t there been sun and sand and the smell of blood and burnt flesh just now? He turned his face into his shoulder, thought about opening his mouth to shout, to let Holland know where -

The pressure let up all at once, the darkness scattering with a high-pitched echoing shriek. When John dared to uncurl and look up, the first thing he saw was McKay, half on his back and holding something that looked an awful lot like a run of the mill pocket flashlight. In the spaces the beam hit the shadows grayed and crumbled like ash, gone before it hit the ground.

Once he could breathe again John said: “Are you all right?”

“Oh yeah,” McKay said bleakly, dabbing at a scratch on his cheek with a sleeve, “this is fun for me. I’m the traditional heroic stereotype; this is the kind of thing that gives me life.”

Going off on the assumption that someone well enough for sarcasm wasn’t in immediate danger, John got to his feet and picked up the gun. “What the hell _was_ that?”

McKay blew out a heavy sigh, supporting himself on one knee to push to his feet. “Probably a sorcerer’s equivalent of a pilot fish, I’m sorry to say.”

John stared at him. “Pilot fish?”

“You don’t know what - okay, so sometimes huge dangerous predators can be in a symbiotic - ”

“I know what pilot fish are, McKay. Are you saying something _worse_ than that is coming?”

McKay took on the expression normally found on someone who’d just experienced a distressing bowel movement. “Think, oh, worse to the power of ten, and you’re getting close. This won’t do us much good, anyway.” He held up the thing he’d been working on. It not only looked like a very ordinary pocket flashlight, it _was_ a pocket flashlight, though McKay had written strange symbols all around the glass disc protecting the bulb, and the whole thing was wrapped tightly with an intricate knotwork made of string. The light from it was flickering sadly, about to go out entirely. “Even if it was still working it’d be like firing a water gun into a hurricane.”

John took the time to get his breath back for real while he digested this. “You’re a wizard,” he said finally.

“The penny drops,” McKay said, untangling the string and looking around anxiously. And no wonder, really.

“This sorcerer who’s after us - is that this Mer guy?” McKay’s worry would be a lot more understandable if so; there were a lot fewer restrictions on sorcerers attacking each other, as long as they kept the collateral damage to a minimum.

McKay snorted as if the very thought was laughable, putting away the flashlight. “No, of course not.”

“Then who - ”

“Listen, we don’t have time to stand around chatting. I never meant for you to get involved in this, I didn’t think they’d attack with someone else there, but now you are, and it’d be really shitty of me to let you die, right?”

“Really, really shitty,” John hurried to confirm.

“It’s me they’re after - the less you know, the better. Okay, so we need to get out of here quick. Think about it, just think...” This last part was apparently directed at himself. He closed his eyes for a moment, biting his lip. When he opened them again it took a while for him to refocus. He sighed again. “Oh god, this is all going to end in tears. Okay, Major - take my hand.”

“...why?”

McKay rolled his eyes so comprehensively that it ought to make him motion sick. It was quickly becoming a trademark gesture. “Because I want to recite treacly poetry for you and make you daffodil crowns in the light of the setting sun. Just do it.”

John gingerly reached out and took McKay’s bare fingers in his gloved ones.

“You have to take that off.”

“...okay?”

“ _Yes_ , because I need better conductivity than - just do it, please.”

John glanced around, remembered the feeling of the shadow creature trying to worm its way to his skin, did as McKay told him.

“ _Thank_ you. Okay, much as I hate to admit it I’ve never actually done this before, I mean, I’m mainly a theoretician, not a... anyway, I’m just saying, it might be a bumpy ride.”

“What might be - ”

But McKay had closed his eyes again and was wriggling his boot in thin air as if trying to find a foothold. As John watched he stilled, and then carefully stepped forward on that same patch of air, which - John let out a surprised sound - was actually holding him, he was standing on the air a foot or so over the ground. He wobbled a bit, then steadied himself and slid his eyes open. “Nothing to it,” he said shakily, then pulled at John’s hand. “Okay, so just follow me. I’m doing all the hard work; all you’ve got to do is walk.”

“I don’t know how - “ McKay gave his hand a tug and he stumbled forward and then, impossibly, upward.

“See? Not so hard, is it,” McKay said smugly, taking more steps and towing John behind him, moving further and further off the ground. It was fucking with John’s head, because his legs were telling him he was walking across slightly bouncy yet definitely solid ground, like striding through a room full of pillows, but his eyes were telling him he was ten feet off the ground and counting, and previous experience would indicate that flying had always included at least one more element in the process, like, say, a _plane_.

“How are you doing that?” he asked, holding onto McKay’s hand like a lifeline to sanity as they climbed up to roof height of the buildings they were just standing beneath.

“Short answer? Magic,” McKay said, in a tight voice that suggested he was concentrating on something but just couldn’t pass up the chance to gloat. “Long answer? Proooobably too complicated for you to understand. I mean, the underlying principles are fairly straight-forward - well, I say straight-forward, they’re actually very complex but thankfully I _am_ a genius so it all evens out in the - ”

John dug his heels in to avoid crashing into a nearby chimney. “Okay, genius, could you do a bit less explaining and a little more navigation here?”

“Uh, of course, that’s - sorry.”

The wind stung across John’s face as they rose even more, far enough that they weren’t smothered in chimney smoke but low enough that they weren’t getting battered back and forth by shifting air currents much.

“You, eh, probably shouldn’t look down,” McKay warned, which was of course the surest way to prompt John to do so at once. Under them Skarby stretched out like a village of doll houses huddled together against the long, painfully empty stretches of snow all around. It was the first time John had been in the air without having to think about steering something, and as punishing as the wind was he could feel it hitting him directly, no buffer, nothing to dampen the sensation.

“This is really cool,” he yelled to McKay over the roar of the wind.

“Are you crazy?” McKay’s voice answered in whipping snatches of gale. “Do you _know_ what a fall from this height would do to a human body? Here’s a hint: China against a stone floor!”

John just laughed and tightened his hold on McKay’s hand, the place where their palms met the only warm spot in the world.

“Okay, so I can’t look down, because then I’ll drop us to a terrible, bone-crunching death,” McKay yelled, “but can you see anywhere we could land? Preferably something high up and somewhat magical, if possible?”

John narrowed his eyes against the few dancing snowflakes in the air. “Over there,” he shouted into McKay’s ear, pulling close enough to point along his line of vision. “There’s an old tower from a witch who came down here for the gold rush. It’s not much more than a skeleton of a building by now, but it’s the best I can do you for!”

“No, no, that’s perfect,” McKay answered, his voice carried in snatches over the wind. “If we’re lucky there could even be... residual thaumic... to cover.... tracks!”

“Whatever you say,” John said, cheeks hurting from the wind and the grin digging into his face because on the one hand, yes, crazy shadow monsters, what the hell was that about, and in an absent sort of way he’d rather cherished the ‘whoo-no-one’s-tried-to-kill-me’ record he’d managed to nurse through the last year or so - but on the other hand he was literally taking a stroll on thin air, towed along by a wizard who couldn’t even glance down because he was afraid of heights, and this beat even the most valiant of penguins, hands down.

“That’s it, right?” McKay said, gesturing with his free hand towards the growing silhouette of the witch’s tower.

“I’d think so, unless they just went overboard with the town hall.” It wasn’t very easy to mistake the huge bulking shape coming out from the darkness for anything but a sorcerer’s construction - they tended to view gargoyles and ominous spires like amateur cake decorators did sprinkles; just get enough of it in there in strategic places and you were home and dry.

They approached the tower at a light trot, and as it came closer and closer John’s elation mitigated itself a bit to give room for worry. “You know how to land us, right?”

“Not in so many words, no, because I don’t really know what’ll happen if we cease moving at this height without taking account for - hey, listen,” McKay added, as if sensing John’s accusing glare through the back of his head, “I told you I’d never actually done this before, and let me point out that I’ve gotten us this far without - ”

John decided to take the stick here. He’d done enough rough landings in his time for the both of them. Putting his arm around McKay’s shoulder he changed their direction slightly.

“What the hell are you doing?” McKay yelped, glowering at John over his shoulder while he really should be focusing on not steering them into a wall.

“Head for that balcony there, and we can try and ease down. At least we won’t fall very far if we miss.”

“Ah - yes, okay, that makes sense. Right, hold on, we’re going to - “ In one almost elegant leap McKay’s boot just barely touched the ornate stone railing that hemmed in the balcony, skimmed over it easily, almost as if he’d found some way to be free from gravity -

and then he must’ve misjudged the next step because they both crashed to the ground, landing on each other in various painful ways before they rolled to a stop.

Once he’d made sure he was still alive and in what could reasonably be called one piece, John let the huff of laughter cradled in his throat come out. Somewhere in their tangle of limbs McKay raised his head. After a second he let out a chuckle of his own.

“Okay, that was awful, let’s never get together and do that again,” he managed.

“What do you mean, that was really special for me,” John said. “I was almost speared by a weathervane at least twice back there, that’s never happened to me before.”

“I’ll have you know I just saved your life, you ungrateful - okay, that’s enough from you, get off. I need to make sure I really shook them off.” John obligingly extricated himself and sat up. McKay fished out a battered-looking stone tablet from his disproportionately roomy inside pocket, tapping on it and making absorbed faces. John stood to study the view from up here. It was as impressive a panorama as you could hope to get from Skarby, looking down at the town and a few nearby rooftops.

“Well, at least the tower still has quite a bit of magic in it, so that should make it a lot trickier to track us,” McKay mumbled, tapping away. John walked up to him, looked at the tablet he was holding long enough to establish that it was all nonsense scribbles to him, and said: “Okay, so now that you have the time, can you explain to me why someone’s sending things like that after us?”

McKay turned sharp blue eyes on him and wrinkled his forehead. “I don’t think I should tell you. It’s not after _us_ , it’s after me, and the more you know the more dangerous it’ll be for - ” he stopped as there was a strange rustling sound from somewhere beneath them. Meeting McKay’s eyes for a second, John glanced over the edge of the railing.

“Don’t tell me...” McKay pleaded, joining him.

“Oh yes,” John said, following the slow but inexorable progress of another shadow... thing, crawling towards the foot of the tower. He turned to McKay, expecting to find him pale and jittery again, but instead he’d squared his jaw in a valiant attempt at grim determination.

“Okay,” McKay said, “nothing for it, we need to bring out the big guns. You need to push me off the balcony.”

“I need to what?”

McKay gestured wildly. “To push me over the railing. Topple me. Give me a running start. Falling start. Whatever. Okay, listen, it’s not as bad as you think it is. I’ll show you...” He searched through his pockets again, coming up with a curious green crystal shaped roughly like a turtle shell. “This thing will take off for the fall, I won’t feel a thing.”

“Really? That thing?”

“Yes. Listen, it’s _magic_ , okay, it’s... see, it stores kinetic energy so you can use it for other purposes and then - okay, just consider: In our admittedly short acquaintanceship, have I pinged you as the sort of person who’ll randomly hurl himself off buildings for no reason?”

“Well, no, not particularly, but then that’s an awfully specific vibe to - ”

Out of the blue McKay snatched John’s gun out of where he’d tucked it into his belt and turned it down towards his own foot. Before John could even think about lunging forward and get it back, McKay took aim with his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth and pulled the trigger.

There was a burst of green light. The bullet thudded politely to the ground.

“Convinced?” McKay asked, waving the gun around in a way that had John diving in to retrieve it and flip on the safety. “Because we need to hurry. They’ve probably honed in on my energy signature now, with that little blast, so they’ll go after the magic and leave you be when they pick up the next flare of the shield absorbing the energy of the fall.”

John glanced down. The shadows were closing in on the foot of the tower. “Are you sure you’ll be - ”

“I’ll be fine, I’ve done something... kind of like this before.”

“But - “

McKay stopped him with a hand to his shoulder. “Listen - I got you into this mess, okay? Let me try to make it right.”

For the first time since John met him McKay looked at him dead-on, still and unflinching.

“Okay.”

McKay blinked. “Really? Oh. Okay then, let’s...”

“So how do you want to do this?” John asked, eyeing the distance down to the ground and feeling his skepticism sit up and clear its throat meaningfully.

“Um, well, if I stand like this...” He moved so that he stood with the back of his thighs pressed into the stone railing, “and then you stand right there and give me a good shove. So. On three? One...”

John waited, palms resting on the front of McKay’s coat, ready to push. When nothing more seemed to be coming, he prompted: “And _after_ one comes...?”

“I did tell you about my fear of heights, right?” McKay said, eyes screwed shut. “Because it’s really, really bad. I actually got stuck standing on a chair once, my father had to come pick me down, my sister never let me forget - ”

“Hey, this was your idea,” John hissed.

“I know, I know, of course - two.”

John lifted his eyebrows even though McKay couldn’t see him. “Three?”

“Oh god, if you must, go for it.”

“Three,” John said, shoving as hard as he could.

McKay gave a yelp as he toppled over the railing - fairly easily, since he was keeping himself stiff as a plank - and John had to wonder if he’d just made a big, big mistake as he watched McKay flail through the air. On second thought he probably should have checked if McKay had hit his head during the earlier excitement before he’d agreed to do this.

McKay hit the ground in a virtual fountain of green fireworks, making it impossible to spot him in the chaos. The shadow thing turned towards the spectacle immediately, tower forgotten as it slithered over the snow. It moved a lot faster over open ground than it had in the alleys and shit, McKay might not have thought this all the way through...

The green light went out, the shadows reached the impact site - and McKay wasn’t there.

John blew out the breath he’d been holding just as the shadow shrieked in fury, searching through the snow with writhing tentacles and coming up with nothing. After a while it wriggled away, out onto the snowy plains and disappearing into the darkness.

So if McKay weren’t down there, where exactly...

“Is it gone?”

John jumped, leaning over the railing to find out where the voice was coming from. A little way down and to the right of the balcony McKay was clinging to a gargoyle for dear life, looking flustered and pissy but essentially unharmed.

“Yeah, it’s gone - do you need a hand down there?”

“No, no, I’m just peachy, thank you.”

“How the hell did you do that?” John asked. That was quickly becoming his catchphrase here.

After some fumbling down there McKay triumphantly held out the green crystal. “See, I told you, it stores kinetic energy and lets you use it for other things. And the power from a fall from that height is enough to get you back up quite a way, right? Uh, I should probably get going,” he added, scrambling to tighten his grip.

“Sure,” John said.

“I’d say it’s been a pleasure, except that would be an obvious lie. At least you’re out of trouble again, Major. Good luck with the rest of your stay in this icy hellhole.”

“Gee, thank - ” But between one blink and the next McKay was gone, and John was standing there with nothing but the freezing wind for company.

“That was different,” John told no one in particular, trying to make sense of everything that had just happened. It was already starting to seem pretty damn unlikely, and it hadn’t even been five minutes yet.

He’d known about magic, of course, seen it used for modest purposes now and then, and the military accumulated sorcerers like burrs these days so he’d even flown with some - but he’d never seen anything like that before, up close and personal. His father had always frowned on any magic not strictly used in industrial production; John supposed it had less to do with distrusting magic in household appliances than a general distrust of anyone who could do things he couldn’t.

He decided he’d stop thinking about it until some later point, when he could take it back out for a drive to see if it looked any more like reality then. As he stood there it dawned on him that he was standing on the top floor of some old witch’s tower held together by nothing but habit and a dash of magic, while he was actually supposed to have gotten back from the mail run right about now. He’d dropped the letters in the alley. It was at least half an hour’s walk from here - as soon as he could get down from the tower. Sumner was going to go crazy. John couldn’t say he’d be losing sleep over that, except possibly in the literal sense since he’d probably be set to a month of night shifts with added latrine duty after this.

He went to the door at the end of the balcony and found it locked. For a moment he considered the many perks of trying to climb down the facade of the tower - lots of fresh air, healthy exercise, high probability of being caught by a gust of wind and enjoying a comprehensive if very brief tour of the tower’s architectural structure en route to the ground...

He tested the strength of the door with a shoulder. It had a promising give in it. Standing back, he took aim and kicked. The door didn’t as much splinter as crumble sadly around his boot, but one more kick made the lock twist and give and the door creaked open on rusty hinges. It lead to a dingy corridor, and then out to the landing of a staircase.

The inside of the tower was a mess of rotting timbers and rubble. Most of the winding staircase was still intact, while the furniture and tapestries were molded and dilapidated - the leftover magic must have gone into the stone to keep the outer walls and the inner structure stable. While John watched a stone slab fell out of the staircase and dropped for what felt like a disconcertingly long time before hitting the floor at ground level.

Okay, so the choices were to either climb down the side of the tower without anything so wimpy as a rope, to wait and hope to god someone thought to look up here before he’d starved to death... or to brave a stairwell that kept shedding pieces of itself. Excellent.

He eased out onto the landing, carefully testing the waters by shifting his weight from foot to foot. It seemed to hold well enough.

“Okay, here goes,” he muttered, keeping to the wall as he started the descent. That walking-on-air thing McKay had had going would have come in handy right about now.

To his credit it went very well for a long time. Floors ten through six gave him no trouble at all. Here and there he found traces of magic trying to break its way out from its imprisonment - open-mouthed faces twisting out of stone, rafters growing a small forest of vines, window glass turning gooey and oil-sheened - but everything still held together. The witch hadn’t been skimping out when she had this place made.

Then, beside a broom closet between the sixth floor and the fifth, he managed to step in the wrong place, and he felt the ground give under him in that horrible moment that is just long enough to let you realize something painful is about to happen and just short enough that you can’t do anything about it - except potentially to think ‘Oh, awesome, I survived a magical shadow monster only to bash my brains out half an hour later’. The step shifted and tilted and he threw out a hand to fumble for a handhold and found something long and narrow to -

The ground disappeared from under him and he dangled from his handhold on what appeared to be a broom, wedged between the broom closet doorway and a wall.

Okay. The important thing was not to panic. Or move. Or breathe too hard. He searched carefully with his toe for a foothold. Maybe if he could insert his foot in that crack and kick off...

He managed to flounder himself back up onto the landing, the broom clattering to the ground beside him. Upon closer inspection it wasn’t actually a broom - he pulled it out from where it had been stuck in the closet - it was the pole end of a scarecrow, with a carved turnip face that probably shouldn’t have been able to express the kind of anger it currently was. It was full of cobwebs, from the long torn rags that served as its hair to its faded clothes. It seemed peculiarly life-like for something made up entirely by wood, cloth and root vegetable. Apparently the witch had had some freaky hobbies.

“Sorry about that, buddy,” John said, leaning it up against the wall. He peeked into the closet and felt a weird kind of fellowship with an inanimate object - stowed somewhere cold and dark, with no prospects of getting out? He could sympathize.

He reached the foot of the tower without further incident. A couple of times he thought he heard sounds behind him, but every time he looked back there was nothing. He was probably still a little jumpy.

Upon breathing fresh air again he realized that he’d lost his gloves somewhere along the way. He sighed, stuck his hands in his pockets and started walking back towards Skarby.

 


	2. In which John's distrust of authority is somewhat justified

 

John decided not to mention his little adventure with Dr. McKay - Ph.D, Ph.D - to anyone. Partly it was a matter of not really having anyone to to tell, and partly it was because the whole thing was still blurry to him and there was no way he’d be able to just casually bring it up without getting a psych eval thrown his way.

Sumner had already given him shit for coming back late from his mail run. “You come back here two hours overdue,” he’d said, in that slow, elaborate way that was always bad news in the mouth of authority, “with several shots fired from your service weapon and a torn uniform coat... and the best explanation you can give me is that you had to ward off a flock of overly inquisitive penguins.”

“Yessir,” John said, mentally thanking McKay for that little gem. “I know they look docile enough, sir, but let me tell you, you _don’t_ want to be on the wrong side of that beak. Vicious little bastards, sir.”

Sumner rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Sheppard - they live along the coast. You were several miles inland.”

“Don’t know that they know they only live along the coast, sir.”

“Major, I swear to god, if I hear as much as _one word_ from Skarby that you’ve been causing some kind of trouble - ”

“You won’t. Sir.” In fact the town had seemed perfectly oblivious when he’d managed to retrieve the letters and make his way to the plane. John certainly wasn’t going to be the guy shouting shadow monster without proof.

Sumner rested his face in his palm - not even discreetly, John noted - and flapped his other hand as if John was a bad smell he could wave away. “Dismissed, Major. Just... go and get started on your duties and don’t let me see you in here again today. Understood?”

“Yessir.” His duties, in this case, meant organizing paperwork. Heaps and stacks and mountains of paperwork, all in varying states of should-have-been-done-five-years-ago. Every obligatory form no one usually bothered with, every obscure receipt, every requisition ever made for anything from dartboards to new motor parts, they’d all found themselves a papery last resting place on John’s desk on the third day of his stay, awaiting glorious archivation. John supposed that had been all the time Sumner had needed to decide that he was the kind of troublemaker that would need a firm hand and lots and lots of mind numbing routine work to keep him out of the way.

 

Sumner had apparently been supposed to go on another mission entirely - presumably to somewhere you could take a leak outside without getting frostbite in places that lead to unfortunate appointments with the base’s medical officer - but he’d managed to bust up his leg or something a few weeks before he was set to go, and instead he’d been sent here. John still couldn’t tell if his own assignment here had been meant as a punishment for the colonel from someone higher up, he only knew that Sumner had taken a deep and immediate dislike to him, and sadly John didn’t always have the self-control needed to keep his head low and ride it out anymore - not after whole days sorting through food bills from three years ago. Since the last of the scientists from the research station had arrived for the winter there hadn’t been much else to do either, so it’d been harder to just shut up and grit his teeth and do as he was told.

A cursory check of the roster showed that, as he’d expected, his name now featured heavily on the after midnight portion of the shifts. He didn’t really mind. He’d never had any problem working nights, and in the polar winter the difference between night and day was largely semantic.

He’d gotten himself the kind of book you could throw and kill a man with from the base library. He was set.

The base, not exactly a teeming lair of activity even during business hours, was quiet like a mausoleum at night. Every now and then the footsteps of someone shuffling from their bunk to the bathroom and back again rustled between the walls in the next corridor over, but apart from that the sound of pages turning and the wall clock ticking off the seconds until the end of the shift were the only things breaking the silence.The sorcerers who’d assisted in the building of the complex network of barracks that made up the base hadn’t gone in for comfort; the wind occasionally made its way through the cracks around the windows and stroked in chilly wisps along his neck.

John read the three first pages, realized he had no idea who at least four of the characters with really long names were, flipped back and read it again. This must be what those Zen monks did in their time off. He crossed his ankles on the desktop and settled in.

He’d expected that to be the extent of his activities until dawn. During his stay here the only time anything at all had required his attention was when old Colonel Whimshall had forgotten to wear ice studs on his boots and slid while drunkenly trying to sneak his way back in through a window. Since his blood had been only a couple of desperate red cells and a shot away from being pure vodka at that point, no one had been very surprised. It was apparently just what this place did to you after a while - Whimshall had reportedly been perfectly functional before he’d been sent down here for some relaxed years before his retirement. John wasn’t sure those hadn’t been tears of joy he’d been weeping when they carried his stretcher away to the ship bound for warmer climes and sophisticated medical care. He wasn’t real optimistic about his own prospects these days.

John was therefore pretty surprised when, at about half past two, someone knocked on the base doors.

“Hi there,” the man outside chirped when John got the door a crack open. “Sorry to barge in on you so late. General Jack O’Neill, asking permission to enter your fair snow shelter here.”

John looked down at the ID card the man handed over. It looked genuine enough, with a picture that matched the gray-haired man in front of him and the sorcerer’s seal that made it impossible to change the card’s appearance with a spell.

O’Neill. He’d heard that name before, he realized. Every now and then the sorcerers he’d transported to the research station would mention him - mostly, as far as John could tell, in embitterment because he had some special expertise that would have made their jobs a lot easier if he’d just lend a hand.

“I don’t mean to rush you here, but frostbite isn’t a good look on me,” O’Neill said.

“Yeah, sure, just hang on...” John pulled out the bases’ old fashioned one-step-up-from-a-clay-slab tablet and let it scan the ID card. At once the tablet confirmed that the general was not only on the authorized personnel list, he had a higher security clearance than even Sumner did. “Come in, sir,” John said, stepping aside. O’Neill brushed snow from his shoulders as he stepped over the doorstep.

“This place could’ve done with a lick of paint, couldn’t it?” he commented, taking off his gloves.

“It keeps the snow out, sir. Most of the time,” John said. “Not to be rude, but is there a reason in particular that you’ve trekked out all this way in the middle of the night?”

“I like a man who doesn’t muck about, Major...” He squinted at John’s name plaque.

“Sheppard, sir,” said John, who was immediately unsettled by the apparent lack of implied disdain behind the words. His superior officers hadn’t looked at him with such good-natured benevolence since... well, ever. Especially not after the first court martial.

“Well, then, Major Sheppard, I won’t beat around the bush. I’m here because I require the use of one of your flying machines.”

John waited for a follow-up. When it seemed none was coming, he said: “Right now, sir?”

“No, I just heard that the night life out here was amazing and wanted to see for myself. Yes, now.” Still morbidly cheerful and John was getting really creeped out.

“Oh. Well, sir, you see, I’m not actually allowed to...”

“Take ‘em out at night? Oh, I know all about that, but this is kind of an emergency situation, Major. I’ll cover your ass in the aftermath, if there even is one.”

John, not by nature a trusting person, found his inner bullshit alarms blaring. Sure, it was easier asking forgiveness than permission. Sure, there wasn’t anywhere worse on this planet they could conceivably send him. Sure, Sumner wouldn’t outright strangle him before they even found a windswept headland to leave him on. “Hey, I hate to be, you know, _that_ guy here,” he said, “but all flight requests have to go through Colonel Sumner. I could rouse him for you, if you’d like.”

O’Neill grinned a little wider, so his incisors showed. The expression was probably meant to be reassuring. “I don’t think that’s going to be necessary, Major - do you?”

Thoughts like _What harm could it possibly do?_ and _What Sumner doesn’t know won’t hurt him_ and _Well, the general did say it was an emergency_ spun through John’s head, making him a bit disoriented. He shook his head to clear it. “I... actually, it’s...” Hey, hey, hang on - “Excuse me for asking, sir, but how the hell did you get to this base in the first place, if you don’t already have a plane?”

And how the fuck hadn’t he asked that first thing, before he’d let the guy inside? The base was hardly a step, skip and a jump away from anywhere; it took forty minutes to fly here from Skarby, which was the closest human settlement in any direction. Whatever other mode of transportation the general could have made use of would’ve taken him at least a day. Even then there was no way in hell he’d be traveling alone - no one with an ounce of sense set out on the ice sheets on their own, or at least not without letting the base know over the radio when you were supposed to arrive.

Shit, John had been afraid of losing his edge out here, but he hadn’t thought it would get this bad.

O’Neill made an almost regal wave of dismissal. “Oh, that’s nothing you should have to think about, Major Sheppard.”

Another strange discordant moment, thoughts racing through John’s head -   _He’s right, if it’s an emergency we might not have a lot of time,_ and _Every moment you hesitate, people could be dying_ and **_We don’t leave our people -_**

and they all _sounded_ like his thoughts except too much so, like parodies, like bartering chips laid down with no subtlety...

“I’ll get you Colonel Sumner, shall I?” John asked, intensely aware of the weight of his service weapon resting against his thigh. That fixed, hungry grin was getting wider and John was fighting an urge to break out the ‘My, general, what big teeth you have’.

“You don’t want to do that,” O’Neill said, putting his hand on John’s arm. John meant to pull away, but the general’s voice sounded so soft, certain, like he was simply stating one of the obvious truths of the universe. It was a voice that wanted to worm its way straight into the synapses and whisper ‘heel’.

“You know what, I really, really do,” John said levelly, meeting the general’s eyes.

Was it just him or did the man look... surprised?

At that same moment John’s radio crackled to life. “Major Sheppard,” barked the voice of Colonel Sumner, which John had never thought of as welcome before, “why am I hearing something damn close to a tea party coming from your direction?”

Thank god the sorcerers hadn’t thought to include luxury features like walls that wouldn’t carry the sound of a falling pin to the next room over when they built this place. John lifted his eyebrows, not breaking eye contact with O’Neill. “You gonna let me answer that?”

O’Neill’s surprise had morphed into a look of bemused - and under the circumstances, highly worrying - interest. “Go ahead.”

John slowly moved his hand to the radio and pressed the button. “Hi, sir,” he said slowly, “we’re dealing with some... unforeseen circumstances here.”

“What are you talking about?” Sumner snapped before he got any further.

“We have a visitor, sir. It’s General O’Neill, sir.”

There was a long pause. O’Neill’s eyes were all but glittering at him.

“Are you serious, Major?”

“Wouldn’t lie to you about a thing like that, sir,” John said. Another long pause. O’Neill still had his hand on John’s arm - it was just a touch, not a grip, but John still wasn’t moving away, for some reason. The general’s head was tipped to the side, like he was studying something colorful and soon-to-be-extinct on the other side of a terrarium wall.

“Well, then, Major, just entertain our guest for a minute, and I’ll be right there.”

“Just as you say, sir.” The radio clicked off.

O’Neill was armed too, a gun dangling from his hip, a knife in his belt, who knew what else hidden in strategic places. John was pretty sure he was going to be the quicker draw... but quick _enough?_ Besides, if this was, against all probability, not some strange and elaborate trick and O’Neill was just kind of a weird guy, it was all John needed to have ‘murder of superior officer’ down on paper as his crowning fuck-up.

When steps came down the corridor, O’Neill slowly removed his hand. Sumner rounded the corner, wearing an undershirt and a hastily buttoned-up shirt. He took in the scene for a second before he smiled. “General,” he greeted O’Neill, moving towards them. “To what do we owe the honor? If I knew you’d be by these parts I’d smarten the place up a bit.” His gaze seemed to flicker in John’s direction as he said this, which John felt was kind of unfair.

“Aw, no, you shouldn’t go to any trouble, I’ll be out of your hair in no time,” O’Neill said easily. John looked at Sumner, who only met his eyes briefly and then turned to their guest again.

There was something wrong about the way he stood, though, in the set of his shoulders. John tensed up further.

“He wants to take a plane out, sir,” he said.

Sumner lifted his eyebrows. “Well, that could certainly be arranged for the likes of you, General. Major, go get the flight forms and some keys, would you?”

John went over to the desk. Sumner stood tilted away from O’Neill slightly, giving only John a good view of his right side. As John got behind the desk to pull the drawer open, Sumner’s hand fell almost imperceptibly to the gun at his side, hidden by his trailing shirttails.

Okay. Real trouble, then. He started flipping through flight forms without really looking.

The moment Sumner drew the gun John let the papers scatter and followed him, training his gun on O’Neill’s head. O’Neill looked from one to the other of them, the smile never fading from his face. “Now, boys, what’s this supposed to mean?” he asked, throwing his arms up disarmingly. “I thought we were all friends here.”

“Don’t even try it,” Sumner said tightly. “The game’s up. See, I happen to know that the real General O’Neill is currently in a meeting at court. Which only leaves the question of who the hell you are.”

The man who apparently _wasn’t_ O’Neill lowered his hands slowly. “Ah, see, I chanced on you being too far away for regular radio contact with the northern empire,” he said. “My plan kind of hinged on that. Man, you’ve got to have some intense boosting tech lying about under the snow here.”

“Identify yourself.”

O’Neill turned to John, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “It was a pretty good plan, though. I mean, if I do say so myself. Which I must, since no one else will ever know just how good it was. Now that it’s failed.”

“My heart bleeds for you.” John glanced over at Sumner. “Sir, should we call - “

“Identify yourself,” Sumner repeated, his gun pointed at O’Neill’s chest. O’Neill moved a hand towards his pocket. “And keep your hands where I can see them, or I’ll shoot.”

O’Neill’s hand moved undeterred. Sumner fired twice, each bullet thudding into the man’s chest. The general swayed gently and then righted himself. He looked down himself. “Oh, for cryin’ out loud, will you look at that? Do you _know_ how long it took to piece together a whole uniform from him?” The bullet holes in his chest were oozing liquid too dark and gooey to be human blood.

“What the hell,” Sumner hissed, firing again. O’Neill jerked a little with each impact. He sighed deeply, running his hand over the holes in his coat. “Oh, well, since it’s ruined now anyway...” He stood up straight and started moving towards Sumner. John aimed for his head and pulled the trigger.

With a speed unlike anything John had ever seen in a human being O’Neill dodged, turning his face towards John in the same instant he slapped Sumner’s gun hand away. As if Sumner weighed nothing more than a ragdoll, O’Neill jerked him off his feet and held him up in front of him. “Oh, no, you definitely don’t muck about, do you, Major Sheppard.” Sumner was keeping very, very still, his toes barely brushing the floor.

Far away he could hear confused voices and footsteps - the living quarters for most of the base personnel were on the other side of the complex, but even down there the racket must have been impossible to ignore. Any minute now the backup would be coming, and then...

O’Neill turned his head towards the sound and hissed. Then he did something completely crazy - he pushed Sumner away from him, vaulted forward over the desk, towards John, and -

The inside of John’s head exploded in a galaxy of stars and he just had the time to think _Oh shit_ before O’Neill was over him with that same superhuman speed, his hand clawing at John’s throat, his shoulder, his - pain shot through his fingers and he roared as he felt the gun being wrested out from between them, and he tried to buck up from his hips and twist to flip the other man to the side and under him, but O’Neill was heavier than he looked and John still couldn’t see properly for the bruise-colored lights dancing on the inside of his eyelids.

In a flash of inspiration John fumbled for O’Neill’s belt until he found the hilt of the knife he’d seen there. He fought to get it loose, clumsy with only his left hand, as O’Neill’s fingers again closed over his throat. Twisting sharply he managed to shake that grip and get the knife out. Just as his vision returned he caught sight of a hand on its way down towards his face, and without letting conscious thought slow him down he brought the knife up. Something hot and sticky splashed across his cheeks as the knife went through the palm of O’Neill’s hand.

The man didn’t scream; instead he hissed a high, thin shriek and bolted back, clutching at his hand. John had used up his last air on that manoeuvre and was helpless to do anything but gasp as the weight lifted from his chest. There was the sound of another shot - in the space between the floor and the desk John could glimpse Sumner back on his feet, moving back towards a corridor for cover and for fuck’s _sake_ , what was taking so long with the rest of the base waking up?

O’Neill grabbed the knife and yanked it out, that same thick, black blood spilling out from the wound. “Son of a _bitch_ ,” he muttered, shaking his hand.

“Let Major Sheppard walk over here unharmed and I won’t blow your head off,” Sumner growled. “You’ll be outnumbered one to fifteen in a minute and I’d rather not have to deal with the mess.”

John took the time to feel a little touched by that. He’d always figured that should he be sent into the lion’s cage, Sumner would be the guy who’d buy a padlock, special, made just for the occasion. Behind the cover of the desk he looked around for something that could conceivably be used as a weapon. His gaze fell on the book still lying where he’d left it. Thick as a brick, and just as heavy. Oh well, it was a bad strategy with ample opportunity for failure, but how was that new. He crawled closer to it.

Before he got to the book, though, a lot of things happened very fast. O’Neill launched himself forwards with another hoarse shriek, easily brushed off the first shot that hit him, dodged the rest; it was like watching a very strange yet elegant dance, Sumner moving back until he hit a wall, the other man loping towards him in long, soundless bounds.

John was on his feet and running as the first bullet hit Sumner in the shoulder, was only a meter away when O’Neill pulled the trigger a second time, brought the book down hard just as Sumner’s head snapped back and the walls were sprayed with red.

O’Neill went down, his hand shooting out and taking John with him, making him crash into the slumped figure of Sumner and covering his left side in warm, sticky blood. John fought to get up, his head empty of anything except the writhing sickening realization that he’d been too late, he fucked up, he’d fucked up _big time_ , that feeling burning into every cell in his body and letting him know it before his brain caught up. Still-warm slippery skin sliding against his, that familiar metallic-sweet smell and sweat and hair against his face and he wanted to throw up so viscerally that not even adrenaline was mitigating it.

A hand clutched at his lapels and wrenched him to his feet. “If I’d known you’d be such a pain in my ass,” O’Neill snarled, “I’d have shot you on sight!”

“We all make mistakes, sir,” John rasped, weakly trying to pry the man’s fingers off him. The blood was sending shivers of cold down his neck with every gust of O’Neill’s breath.

O’Neill looked down at Sumner and pushed at the body with a foot, then fired a third shot as if to make sure - as if having a hole clean through the back of your head wasn’t a conclusive cause of death. “Oh well, I guess I can find some use for you,” O’Neill said, letting John down to his feet and marching him towards the doors at gunpoint. When they passed the coat stand by the door he took down a uniform coat and threw it at John. Footsteps were closing in on them, but not quickly enough.

“Move a toe wrong and I shoot you. Got it?” O’Neill pushed John out into the cold darkness and pushed the door shut behind them, wedging it shut with the shaft of a snow shovel.

John tried to impress upon his toes that total immobility was the life choice du jour.

“Head towards the hangar,” O’Neill said. “I want you to take the machine that requires the least fuss to get started and get it ready for flight. And don’t try to be clever with me,” he added, “because if they catch up they’ll find me long gone and you with your superior officer’s blood all over you, holding the gun that killed him.”

“I should be able to get one of the dragonflies ready in about three minutes,” John said. “If I drop most of the basic security protocols.”

“And you can fly it?”

John stared at him, insulted even under the circumstances. “I could fly anything they’ve got in there.”

“Then let’s just say I’m fully prepared to lose the ‘please fasten seatbelts’ sign as long as she’s ready to go in five. Chop chop, let’s go.”

 

\----

 

After twenty minutes of silence inside the dragonfly O’Neill said: “Okay, so I can tell from the instruments that we are going in the right direction, but seriously, how far away is this place?”

“Forty five minutes or so from the base, sir,” John said, the ‘sir’ sneaking in there even though Sumner’s blood was crusting around his cuticles and this General O’Neill was, with all probability, neither the real O’Neill nor a general. That probably said something slightly worrying about either his mind or his relationship to his superiors.

O’Neill was quiet for another long while, all but twiddling his thumbs. “So,” he said finally, tinny in John’s ear, “you said you could pilot all the flying machines you’ve got on the base?”

“I’ve been qualified to pilot just about anything,” John said, staring at the sharp black and white border of the horizon. “Even tried my hand at one of those zeppelins they use to transport supplies.”

O’Neill made a small ‘hm’ of recognition. “That’s a lot of training for somewhere like this.” He waved the gun at the landscape outside the window. John really hoped the safety was on.

“I’d never been to a pole before. Couldn’t knock it before I’d tried it.” He wondered if he could get a message through to the research station before they arrived. O’Neill seemed to know its location, so John couldn’t easily just fly them around randomly until the fuel ran out.

“Well, I can’t see it becoming a favorite, really,” O’Neill said, wrinkling his brow at the snowdrifts beneath. “A bit too... god-awful for my taste.”

“I kind of like it here,” John admitted, feeling that oddly serene space in his mind brought on by the combination of flying and adrenaline.

“You _like it_ here.”

“Yes sir. We’ll be there in five minutes.” So there was no way he could operate the radio without O’Neill getting suspicious. But still, he couldn’t very well take the problem away from the base just to transfer it to...

The research station appeared under them, and it was obvious at once that something wasn’t as it should be. The glass dome that covered it - most of the station seemed to be situated underground, which made sense with the punishing winter storms - was empty of light, a dead black hole in the snow. Once they got a bit closer he could see that the dome was cracked and blackened in some places, sooty streaks marring the glass from the inside.

O’Neill swore quietly beside him. Okay, so he hadn’t expected that either, then. That was something, at least. “Set us down here, Major, we’ll walk the rest of the way.”

John did as he said, landing the dragonfly a couple of hilltops away from the dark, quiet dome. He’d never been much closer to it than this; station personnel would pick up new arrivals from quite far away, as if a glance would have enabled John to glean the layout of the place under the snow.

When they got there it turned out that the lift, at least, was still working. The shaft seemed to go on for a disconcertingly long way, the beam from the flashlight O’Neill took from his ragged coat getting swallowed up by shadows before it hit the bottom. There were no sounds from down there.

“That’s comforting, isn’t it,” O’Neill said, his voice echoing hollowly. “Okay, get in.” He pressed the down-button of the lift and it began a slow, creaky descent. As they moved John could hear the chugging sounds of a diesel generator. The shaft was made of sheer ice walls, blue-white in the flashlight.

Eventually they reached the bottom and stepped out. It was positively warm and cuddly down here in the protected, cave-like place compared to the biting chill of the surface, and there _were_ lights on - low blue-white spots of illumination in the floor and walls, like emergency lighting. A stronger glow came from a room further in.

It was also completely devoid of people. John could see some traces of the presence of alchemists and sorcerers - workbenches, supply crates, runestones, a multitude of beakers and powders and strange twisted glassware - but it looked almost as if they’d been left in the middle of work and that the people using them just hadn’t come back from lunch. At least there didn’t seem to be any bodies, either, and despite the scorched glass overhead nothing down here showed signs of a struggle.

O’Neill walked a bit further in, looked around some corners, shook his head as he came back. “Odd, don’tcha think?” he asked, resting his hand on his hip and scanning the room with a wrinkled brow.

“Couldn’t say, sir, I don’t know how it looks normally,” John said, going for the age-old trick of strategic density in the face of authority.

“Just... stay close and don’t touch anything,” O’Neill sighed, edging into the deeper parts of the facility.

Eventually even John was bound to realize that this wasn’t a normal sorcerer’s laboratory. There were strange things in here - stranger than the occasional stuffed-alligator-and-crystal-ball variety of magic, things that looked oddly like pieces of machinery but sleeker, cleaner, more like art than technology. They were covered with carved symbols and swirling patterns in metallic paint, definitely magical in nature even to John’s layman eyes, but... combining magic and mundane technology like that, directly, in the same object? John’s fundamentally facile understanding of current occult thinking, mainly acquired from the backlog of Nancy’s father’s long-time subscription to _Theurgy Monthly,_ was that no one was even close to trying that on any larger scale, since no one had ever been able to control the seemingly random fluctuations of the background magic of the universe with sufficient precision. There was no way to guarantee it wouldn’t suddenly explode your test object with enough power to flatten major cities, or indeed ever start up at all.

They reached the room that was bathed in stronger light than the rest, in what seemed to be the center of the facility. In the middle of the room was a chair on a raised platform, ornate and solid-looking, like it was carved out of stone. O’Neill went over to it and stroked his fingers over it, grunting irritably as he looked over the sorcerer’s work bench beside it. Long insulated copper wires were connected to the chair and pulled over to large stone tablets in the corner, black and polished to a shine.

Okay, so maybe they hadn’t been studying the magical field over the pole anyway.  

“When was the last time you heard from this station, Major?” O’Neill asked.

“About two weeks ago or so. They didn’t work very closely with the base, we just brought supplies and transported personnel.”

“They probably had regular crystal ball transmissions with the capital,” O’Neill muttered, tapping his fingers against the armrest of the chair. “Still, someone must have _reported_... damn.” O’Neill’s hands on the chair gave John a weird twisty feeling in his gut; he wished the man would keep away from it.

“Stay right there,” O’Neill told him, walking over to some supply crates and starting to look through them.

“Any chance of turning on the lights?” John said, finding himself drawn towards the chair, hovering beside it. Something was stirring in the back of his mind like a memory long out of use, something big shifting and shedding dust in there. He tried to fight it down, but it spread like a tingle through his blood, skittering down through his fingers. It was like the full-body version of having a word on the tip of your tongue. “Wouldn’t want you to stub a toe while you putter about.”

O’Neill snorted. “I highly doubt it,” he said shortly. John ventured closer to the chair while O’Neill shifted another couple of crates and started in on them.

“How about the central heating?” John said, hand hovering over the armrest.

“If you must know,” O’Neill sighed, “you need the right kind of blood to operate these things, and the chances of it applying to you are minuscule to the point of - hey, hey, hey, what did I _say_ about not touching - ”

But it was too late: as if drawn there by magnetism John’s hand came into contact with the chair and it felt like completing a circuit, the ferocious itching in his veins fading away to a low contented hum. All at once the chair flared with light, a low whirring sound coming from it.

John had a second or so to freak out about the sensation of connecting to the chair as if it were an extension of his own body, strange inorganic sensory input flowing his mind in a gentle but inexorable wave, before he was grabbed by the lapels again and shoved away. The comforting thrum of his blood stopped abruptly, the skin-tight restlessness returning.

O’Neill stared at him for a long time, and in the blue light his eyes seemed... different - they’d been a dark brown before, but now they were taking on a muddy yellowish tinge. Eventually he let go of John’s clothes and took a step back. “Sit down,” he said, gesturing to the chair. His voice growled out of his throat, making it harder to make out the words.

“What happened to ‘don’t touch anything’?” John tried. “I thought that sounded like a very prudent - ”

O’Neill wordlessly leveled the gun at him, so John did as he was told. The moment his back touched the chair he was tilted back and the connection he’d felt before came back, only stronger; he was starting to differentiate isolated information from the big chunk of input pouring into his brain - the facility’s security had been breached, several of the basic control systems had been damaged and were out of commission, drones ready for implementation: 0...

O’Neill’s voice broke through his trance, except it didn’t sound like O’Neill’s voice anymore. In fact it barely seemed human, issuing a long stream of throaty hissing syllables in no language John had ever heard, though he was willing to bet the general thrust of it was something forceful and obscene.

“Chances slim to minuscule, huh?” John said glumly, because this was exactly the kind of luck he had a penchant for: the ‘Congrats on being our 1 000 000th customer, and by the way your doctor called and said to tell you you’ve got cancer’ variety.

“Indeed,” O’Neill said, and it wasn’t just the blue light pulling tricks, those eyes _were_ changing hue, the yellow and green of the iris spreading, the pupil narrowing and stretching...

It wasn’t before the human mask had melted away almost entirely that John really understood what he was seeing. When the swirling facial markings started to appear across sallow, green-tinted skin it was undeniable, though - a demon. He’d managed to get himself into the path of a goddamn demon.

“Get up, John Sheppard,” the demon said, O’Neill’s dry drawl gone now, all conceit of humanity abandoned. “We appear to have more to discuss than I had initially imagined.”

“Not much of a talker, really,” John said, slowly standing up. The demon looked incongruous with the royal uniform still on. “People have commented on it.”

“Oh, but you will talk to me,” the demon said, first tapping John’s shoulder with the muzzle of the gun and then grabbing him by the throat. John was helpless to do anything but go down like a sack of potatoes, the breath slamming out of him as his back hit the floor.

“Lantean!” the demon whispered into his face, one long nail - claw? - rasping across his cheek and down his neck. “Old blood in new veins. Ah, I knew there was something strange when your mind would not bend for me.”

John twitched away from the touch but didn’t have anywhere to go; his shoulder blades dug uselessly into the hard ground and the weight on his chest was impossible to shift. “I don’t know what the hell you - ”

“The colonel was already suspicious when he arrived, so I understand why it would not work on him, but, oh... you are something different entirely, are you not?”

“What - ”

“...and you have something that I am going to need.” The demon put his hand flat on John’s chest and then - reached _in_.

His chest exploded in a mess of pain and pressure, the hand clenching around his heart and pulling at it, squeezing, crushing, knuckles scratching against his ribs and that _couldn’t_ really be what was happening but it was what it felt like, his body spasming up around it.

 _Let it go_ , that same voice from before returned, swirling like smoke and silk through his nervous system, trying to wind its way around and inside.

“Fuck off,” John managed, pushing against the demon’s shoulder, trying to squirm away as his vision darkened around the edges, as the weight seemed to get heavier across his chest, as memories usually strapped down securely started to swirl up into the light...

 _Come on,_ the voice of the demon purred, tugging, gentling, _you want to let it go, you want to leave it, I can_ feel _it, what good is it going to do you like this hmm? Just give it to me and it’ll be all over..._

“No,” John gasped, fumbling through the unmoored sensations to shove the demon away but his head was filling with images and faces and voices, swallowing up space until he was pressed back into a corner of himself just trying to hold on, and -

_Let me take it, let me make it easier, you know you want to..._

The darkness engulfed his world entirely, and then the it broke up like the sliding patterns of a kaleidoscope. He crashed into the flashes helplessly, like you would boulders in a raging river hurtling towards a waterfall, every attempt at finding his bearings or moving around only making the next impact more uncontrolled, less tolerable, his lungs being crushed empty of air and filling with stale thoughts, sensations, moments that were clawing at his insides and roaring to get out -

a gasp for breath and he was standing beside Holland’s empty bunk, honestly unsure whether being allowed to pack his things had been intended as a punishment or a privilege, looking at his hands folding clothes and putting away the trashy thriller novels, the picture frame containing the picture of Holland’s grandmother, the bottle hidden with deliberate lack of finesse inside a pillowcase, while all his mind could do was replay the moments between Holland saying he just needed to take a breather and John realizing that he couldn’t hear the raspy sounds of breathing beside him anymore, that it wasn’t sleep that had slackened his eyes -

blackened twisted metal and the smell of burnt flesh, retrieving dog tags that were all that stood between his team and the crowd of too many nameless, faceless bodies hovering behind them, all lost and irretrievable, all of them a too late, a too little, a not enough -

an infinity of Nancy, her long brown hair and her grin and her capable pragmatism, the way she’d stopped laughing slowly, the constant background awareness of betrayal and trying and _not enough -_

“Stop,” John tried to repeat, except that didn’t sound like his voice, too small and cracked open and

everything started to slide into each other, smell and sight and voices too far into the past to distinguish from each other and then

his mom’s voice calling his name from the kitchen, that bashful inner uh-oh of realizing your mother is probably _psychic_ , because you totally put the cookie jar back exactly as it was when you found it - his mom holding the toy airplane just out of reach for his shorter arms, her laughter ruffling his hair, the world small and soft and tinged with sunlight from wide windows -

his father calling his name from the sick room and feeling the wince taking over his body at the sharp edge in his voice because shit, he hadn’t meant to knock that mug to the floor but it had carried like a church bell in the ghost quiet of the house - his father looking through him, as if he was seeing someone else behind him and -

the world strange and pale around the edges, Dave’s eyes huge and staring in the doorway and his father’s voice like the thud of an ax blade into the chopping block, “...and if you’re stupid enough to turn your back and leave now, you damn well know you shouldn’t bother to come - ”

John let go.

Except he couldn’t. Nothing gave, nothing changed. There was a high shuddering note, like crystal cracking, and the pressure around his heart let up all at once.

He didn’t remember the minutes that came after that, only had a vague sense of shock-laced pain and that grey sluggishness that he associated with blood loss. When his senses started to kick in again it was only half-heartedly, information trickling to him in small drips. The demon was still sitting on his haunches beside him, looking at him with his head tipped to one side. He seemed thoughtful.

“Something different, indeed,” he said slowly. “You would really rather die?”

John didn’t answer. His ribs ached.  

The demon shrugged. “Oh well. I suppose you will change your mind, after a while. I have time. Look here,” he said, taking out a slip of paper from his inner pocket. It was the kind of fancy purple paper lots of sorcerers favored and had symbols written on it in harsh black lines - a spell. “One year. For one year, this will be able to tell you how to find me, and we can discuss it again, hm? Much more than a year and it will be in too bad a condition to be of any use to me.” He put it flat on John’s chest and it trickled through, melted past skin and nestled inside. “That crack will only get worse. Trust me, Major, you don’t want to still have it in you when it breaks.”

As footsteps moved away from him John felt consciousness slide through his fingers and he went down, silence closing in like an ocean above him.  

 


	3. In which John ventures into an unusual type of tenancy agreement

When he found himself awake again, time got away from John a little - he didn’t know if he lay there for five minutes, fifteen, an hour.

His chest ached like every heartbeat was the blow of a sledgehammer against his ribs.

He lay there, staring at the stainless metal ceiling until the long slow dawn of realizing he couldn’t continue to do so forever peeked over the horizon of consciousness. At some point he’d have to do... something else. Get up. Yes, that was it; he had to get up. He cumbersomely hoisted himself up on his elbows. There was still blood on his uniform and on his skin, a mix of the demon’s black and Sumner’s red, though the latter had faded to a dull brown.

Sumner. He let himself fall back down again. The demon had killed Sumner.

Except that wasn’t how it was going to look, was it. The way the people on the base would see it, Sumner - famously not John’s biggest fan - had been killed with John’s service weapon, whereupon John himself had taken his leave with some haste, stealing a dragonfly and setting off into the night. There wouldn’t be any other witnesses, no security footage - even if the base had used newfangled technology like security cameras, the magical field around the poles tended to mess up recording devices, making them less than trustworthy.This jigsaw puzzle only had four pieces and they probably thought they had three of the corners figured out. If he managed to survive long enough to get to civilization, he’d be arrested on sight.

Great.

Pushing all that aside he got to his feet, stumbled over to the lift, called it down, rode it up. The snow smoothed the landscape into anonymity - John had no real notion of which way Skarby was and he was already painfully cold. He started walking towards what he dimly considered to be west anyway. It wasn’t more of a conscious choice than breathing; not for the first time he noted that there was something about life’s will to continue that didn’t take your opinion on the matter - or indeed logic - into account.

The snow reached to his thighs once he got a bit away from the research station, and before half an hour passed he’d lost all feeling in his shins. The silence would have been absolute but for the wind howling past his ears.       

While the landscape stayed uneventfully white and the sky stayed a horizon-to-horizon carpet of starless black, he tried to put his mind to some kind of use. Who the hell even heard about demons anymore, anyway? John had been under the impression that they’d long ago taken the path of dragons and centaurs - into myth and heated discussions between a certain kind of academic who had more titles than they could afford hot dinners. In most old stories the demons were the last creations of the gods before they went into celestial retirement or whatever it was they did. John had always had a vague suspicion that the gods actually got the hell out when they did _because_ they’d created the demons and soon realized it had been a fuck-up of epic proportions. They’d had a story book when he was a kid - _The Wicked Wraiths of the Waste_ or something like that - explaining how, in the old days, before the great war, the demons had taken children away in the night and eaten them. This was accompanied by terrifying illustrations of monsters with tiny stockinged feet sticking out between their teeth, that kind of cheerful thing children’s authors seemed to have a knack for. While magic was relatively commonplace, no one would be inclined to accept ‘a demon did it’ as a valid explanation for a murder from anyone not overtly psychotic. He’d probably have more luck convincing people that he’d had a bad run-in with the boogey man.  

After what he’d guess was an hour and a half, his legs gave out from under him in the middle of a slope and he tumbled back down the hill, flopping bonelessly on top of the snow until he reached the bottom. He landed face down and was unable to turn over for a while, the pain in his chest roaring back up like a forest fire. While he gasped for air he realized that he was shivering all over, involuntary shaking spreading up and down his body.   

He was never going to make it back to Skarby. He’d known that since he started out, of course, but the feeling of a faceful of snow was somehow lending the fact more pathos. Just as he was seriously considering cutting the whole ordeal short by not getting up again, something hit the back of his head with a sharp ‘twack’. John heard himself make a startled sound and folded his arms over his head, but nothing more happened. He ventured a quick glance about.

Outlined against the dark sky stood the scarecrow from the witch tower, hopping restlessly back and forth on its pole, rags fluttering in the wind.

“Oh,” John said, wondering idly what the opposite of a sunstroke-induced hallucination was and how you’d know if you were having one, “I... hi there, buddy.”

The scarecrow undulated solemnly, its turnip face turned to John.

“...did you want something?” John prompted through chattering teeth. The scarecrow hopped closer, pushing at John’s hip a couple of times, seemingly urging him to get up. “Okay, yeah, sure,” John muttered, laboriously pushing up to a crouch while his legs quivered. As he did a fresh explosion of pain erupted in his chest and he curled up again, trying to hunch down and contain it, to breathe around it...

_Twack!_

“Ow!” John covered his head again and glared at the scarecrow, eyes gone bleary with pain. He managed to choke out: “Would you _stop_ that? I was on my way, okay? Gimme a moment here.”

Impressively for something that didn’t have shoulder joints, the scarecrow appeared to give a shrug. It urged John up again. John’s legs immediately folded under him, but the scarecrow tilted itself at an angle and wedged the stick that served as its shoulder under John’s armpit, hoisting him up.

“...thanks, buddy,” John slurred, pathetically slumped against the scarecrow, which, in turn, started to move forward, tugging John with it. “Hey, that’s... sorry, I don’t know if I’m up for - “ The scarecrow jumped more forcefully, towing John along helplessly. “Or maybe I am,” John allowed, using his free hand to press against his chest because damn, it hurt like being shot, hurt like something trying to lever his ribs open from the inside. He had no idea how long they trudged through the snow, his vision slowly darkening around the corners with the haze of pain and what he dimly suspected to be the creeping numbness of hypothermia. He was starting to feel warmer again, positively cosy, and he really doubted it was because some kind soul had donned him with a nice thick scarf and woolen hat while he looked the other way. Pretty soon he was all but dangling from the scarecrow’s shoulder, legs barely moving at all.

Then the scarecrow stopped, without any reason John could discern.

“Well,” he rasped, glancing around, “I’m going to stop complaining that you never take me anywhere, that’s for sure.” The scarecrow merely tilted to take more of John’s weight and stood there mutely - not that it had much choice.

“Listen,” John said after a stretch of silence in the whipping wind, trying to conjure up the desperation the occasion demanded and only managing a sort of exasperated ennui, “much as I’ve enjoyed this guided tour of the middle of nowhere, ice edition...”

And that was when John saw the city.

At first he thought it was only shadows, indistinguishable from the night sky, but then the mist slid away from it and he saw faint pinpricks of light against the starless background. As his mind started to wrap itself around what he was seeing the city broke away from the horizon and _became_ the horizon - holy shit, the thing was enormous, rising out of the darkness for what seemed to be miles. He was starting to understand what Klaus the barman’s informants had been talking about; the outline of towers twisting right into the sky like broken bones, the lights from their windows like faraway galaxies, the sheer _size_ of the thing...

The scarecrow started forward again. John dug his heels in, and the scarecrow endeavored to radiate impatience.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” John said. “Listen, I’m not an expert in magical real estate or anything, but something tells me that a wizard who can afford all this is not going to be all that sympathetic to the concept of squatter’s rights.”

The scarecrow nudged its shoulder stick further down John’s arm and wriggled it a bit. After a moment John got the point and lifted his hand in front of his face. It was shaking so badly he might as well be seeing double. “Okay, I see your point,” he conceded. “Better uncertain state of existence in there than certain death out here, huh?”

As if snippily pleased John had finally caught up, the scarecrow started to jump forward again. The closer they hobbled to the city the less immediately impressive it seemed - the way it filled the field of vision from one side to the other made it almost a background feature. John could hear wind howling between distant towers and nothing more, the city’s slow but inexorable journey across the snow completely silent. It hovered five meters or so over the ground, and it really _was_ the size of a city - where the hell did you get the kind of power to get that thing airborne? How could you _keep it_ that way?

The underside of the city was dark and vast and John couldn’t shake a niggling worry that that gravity would realize it had missed a spot and come rushing back just in time to crush them.

“You don’t see a doormat or anything like that, do you?” he asked the scarecrow. Just as the words left his mouth he noticed a spot of light further in -  a long way away, in what had to be the center. The layout of the city seemed to be almost flower-shaped, with sections like petals spreading out from a circular central point. “Maybe they left the porch light on,” John suggested. After a couple of seconds the scarecrow hopped them along again, heading for the lights as the city drifted silently above them.

The lights turned out to be wrapped around the railings of a short winding staircase. The bottom steps almost brushed the ground. In the weak illumination John could see a door at the top of the staircase.

“Okay, that looks like our way in.” John untangled himself from the scarecrow to test his legs. They held on the second attempt. The stairway ended in a small platform, moving towards them with glacier speed and John went for it, stumbling a little before he got a hold of the railing and managed to hoist himself up. “Come on,” he said, extending his had to the scarecrow.

The scarecrow hovered uncertainly for a while, then jumped forward. Before it reached the platform it was bounced back by a shimmering blue light in the air - a forcefield, same as the ones sorcerers used for defending aircraft.

“Hey,” John yelled, stupidly reaching out for it. It made a new attempt and was rebuked again. John experimentally waved his hand in the air where the forcefield showed up, and nothing happened. Maybe it only let through people of flesh and blood? The scarecrow tried a third time.

“Yeah, pal, I’m not sure that’s going to work,” John said, keeping upright by his hold on the railings and the power of will. “Any other ideas? ...no, that’s what I thought. Do you mind if I...” The scarecrow tipped forward and wriggled vigorously towards the door.

“Right.” John clambered up the stairs, something he considered quite impressive since his awareness of his legs was mostly academic by now. He stopped at the top. “Thanks. I mean, really. You saved my ass out there. I owe you one.”

The scarecrow made a couple of quicker hops, the closest thing it could get to waving without any hands. John threw one last look at it before he pushed down the door handle and stepped - or more accurately, fell - inside.

 

\-----

 

The space beyond the door deserved more of a marvel than John was ready to give at the moment. The ceiling was so far away he couldn’t make it out in the shadows, the walls were made of a strange greenish-blue metal. In the middle of the floor stood a round doorway with a stone frame, ostensibly the mark of eccentric interior decoration since it didn’t lead anywhere. The stairs and doorways leading away from the room were lined with the same kind of blue lights as the ones he’d seen in the research station. That might be significant, but John was unable to focus on anything except how every part of him was smarting upon contact with the warmer air.

“Who are you?” said a thin, whispery voice from somewhere behind the round doorway. John jumped and looked around, but there was no one there.

“Who’s asking?” he said, stretching his neck to look past the door. Still nothing.  

“Over here.” There was a soft golden glow from the ground floor’s only window. He’d thought it was a glass painting, stretching up like a ragged tear in the wall, but now there was movement in the golden yellow glass, flitting shapes, like fire... “I’m the one who let you in,” the voice sounded again, and John thought he could see the outlines of a face in there, twisting and changing like flames. The face was mostly eyes, two dark shadows across the glass.

“Oh. Well, thanks a bunch. I really appreciated that.” John tilted dangerously and had to slump against the wall. “...You’re a demon?”  

“No. I doubt your language has words for what I am.” The voice was the combined force of many wisps of sound and it was like they were coming from the whole city, drizzling down on him from every direction at once. “You were lost,” the city whispered.

“Probably,” John said, slowly sliding down against the wall. “ _Why_ did you let me in, exactly?”

“Your heart,” the city said, instead of answering. “It’s breaking.”

“And here I was thinking it was just premature angina,” John muttered, clutching at that spot in his chest that felt like it was hosting a supernova.  

There was a long silence. “I can help you.”

“Yeah?”

“For a price.”

John snorted. “Figures.”

“It’s only fair. It’s a deal we would both profit from.”

“Yeah? How so?”

“If you leave your heart in my custody, I could keep the cracks from shattering it. You wouldn’t even have to feel it. And for me... It’s been a long time since I had that kind of power. I could do great magic again.”

“You want to use my heart as rocket fuel.”

There was a slight pause, as if the city needed to digest this. “That is an imperfect analogy. It would simply be a... catalyst, it doesn’t get consumed as... fuel. It would be perfectly unharmed. As would you. Which is more than can be said about you right now,” the city added, “since several areas of your body have been damaged by exposure to the frost.”  

“Ah.” It was getting hard to think; as he gasped for air this was actually starting to seem like a plausible idea. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“You have my word.”

“Yeah, see - “

“It’s not the same for my kind as for yours. I have to keep my word or I perish.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die, huh?”

The glass seemed to contain a smile that wasn’t very nice. “Can't do that before I have a heart, can I?”

John blinked slowly. “And if I say no? You’ll throw me out again?”

The smile faded away immediately. “Why would you say no?”

“Oh, I guess that I’m just used to... my internal organs staying internal. A bit set in my ways, you know how it is.”

“No, I don’t. I have never had an organic body. No ways to be set in.”

“Oh. Right. Isn’t the wizard in?” John asked. “Doesn’t he have anything to say about this?”

“He fell asleep over his work again. And no, contrary to what he believes, he does not necessarily ‘call the shots’ here.” The city gave the expression the near-palpable quotation marks used by the excessively prim, the punctuationally challenged and the elderly.

“So he won’t, I don’t know - curse me on sight or anything?”

“Even if he did, I would protect you.”

When the city wasn’t talking everything was incredibly quiet, as if they were hidden away somewhere deep under the ocean.

John licked his lips, remembered Sumner’s dead, still-open eyes so close to him, the smell of blood spiraling back through his past in a twisting, sickening line...

“Okay.”

The city said: “Okay?”

“I’ll do it.” He couldn’t imagine another day of stray thoughts lodging into his chest and wrecking havoc like that; he didn’t want to.

“Are you sure?” the city said. “Because if I try to take it against you will, it will just make it worse.”

John stared into thin air for a while. “But if it keeps on like this,” he said slowly, feeling the scream writhing in his lungs, knotting into his ribs, “I’ll die. It’ll just get worse. Right?”

He didn’t really have to ask - he’d been in a lot of life-threatening situations in his time, but he’d never _known_ with such a quiet bone-deep certainty.

“Yes,” the city said, its voice like the rustling of fall leaves. “You will.”

John closed his eyes. “Then I don’t see that I have much of a choice. That close enough to a ‘yes’ for you?”

“Better,” the city said. “Stand in front of the window.”

Somehow John managed to half-walk, half-stumble over to the glass painting. Once there he stood shakily, trying to ignore the loud protests of his knees. “Okay?”

“Just stand still.” The light from the glass painting grew until John had to narrow his eyes against it. He realized that his blood was itching with the same urge to connect he’d felt with the chair in the research station. “Reach your hand out. You might want to close your eyes,” the city added, just as the light grew too bright for John to keep them open anymore.

From behind the refuge of his light-bruised eyelids John still had a weird feeling of being able to see the golden light spreading in his body, illuminating his veins from the inside, puddling in his palm and then flowing up his arm... He gave a small gasp as it reached his shoulder and moved on from there, climbing up his neck like vines and plummeting into the abraded darkness of his chest, light trickling down into his lungs and revealing -

He tried to pull away, a brute animal reflex that wanted to wrench the skin off his bones if that was what it took because he didn’t _want_ to see, it was all stowed down there for a fucking reason -

 _hold still, or I might slip._ The voice plopped straight into his mind without going the way around his ears, just like the demon’s voice had. The city sounded different, though, anxious where the demon had been plying, a whisper where the demon had fought for every echo. _it will be quick, and then you won’t even feel it. okay?_

“Sounds good,” John managed, his fingers curling against the smooth warm glass. “No feeling sounds - great. Get on with that, maybe?”

_if you’d stop wriggling about - I don’t want to hurt you, John._

“Just get _on_ with it.” The pain in his chest was no longer a sensation so much as universal constant. He couldn’t imagine that there had been a time when it wasn’t there, or that it could ever really go away.

_oh. oh, this might be worse than I... I’m sorry, just hold still..._

With that weird sense that wasn’t seeing but felt somehow felt just like it, John saw the light flickering and closing around his heart, felt it lick across the dark spiderweb-thin cracks in it like dancing tongues of flames...

_I’ve got you. it’s okay, you can let go._

Something inside him gave a dying sigh and released. The world darkened and slowed and came back, soft and comfortably chilly, like silk on his skin. His cheek was pressed against the glass, he realized; he was on his knees again.

John pulled in his first long, slow breath in as long as he could remember. The air felt like it was sending up dry swirls of ash in his lungs.

“Ssh, sh,” the city said from far away, “it’s okay. Just go to sleep.”

Before he blacked out completely he thought he heard the barest whisper in his ears, like a high faltering song in a mother tongue he’d never learned well enough to forget.

 

\------

 

He dreamt of children dancing in the hearts of stars, hand in hand, giggling quavering voices chanting a strange melody, and then silence.  

 

\------

 

John’s awakening was rude in more ways than one.

“Hey, you,” a voice that seemed strangely familiar barked at him. Something butted against his ribs. “What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing in here?”

John cracked his left eye open and sure enough, that was the face of Rodney McKay, glaring down at him as though he was a personal insult. Not quite sure how to deal with that information, he let his eye slip shut again.

“Rodney,” the city scolded. “He was sleeping.”

“Exactly! He was sleeping right there! On the floor! Why is there a strange man sleeping on the - hey, hey, hey, you’re that guy! From that town even the whalers thought was too depressing. Major... something. Sheppard?”

“Would you stop shouting if I told you yes?” John mumbled.

“No! No, I won’t, that doesn’t change the fact that - hey, you _knew_ that he was here?” McKay turned to the glass painting where the city’s eyes were currently watching him solemnly.

“Of course. I let him in,” the city said. “It was an emergency. He was in trouble.”

“You can’t just lead any lowlife that happens to pass by to our doorstep because you feel sorry for them! Uh. Saving your presence, of course, Major.”

“None taken,” John said, somewhat on general principle.

“He was out on the ice plains,” the city said stolidly. “And he found the city on his own, that was nothing to do with me.”

“What, and you just _let him in_?” McKay squawked. “God knows what kind of things could have been following him! He could be a wraith in disguise! He could be under a horrible spell! They make some of them _contagious_ these days, you know.”

“Would I have let him in if he was? Give me some credit. Besides, what would you have me do? Let him die on the doorstep?”

“I - hey, wait, _die_?” McKay turned towards John, his eyes widening as if noticing him for the first time. “Oh. Yeah, okay, you don’t look so good.”

“You’re just saying that to be nice,” John muttered, still inexplicably sleepy. He wished McKay would go away, or at least quiet down enough for John to nod off again.

“No really, I’m talking ‘not so good’ as in ‘down with the plague’. Do you need... Wait, why do you have blood all over you?”

“It’s not mine,” John said, curling in towards the perfectly warm and comfortable piece of wall he’d been sleeping against.

“I like how you seem to think that’s comforting.”

“He got into a fight with a certain gentleman,” the city said pointedly. “The same one you were running from, actually. There was an attack on the military base.”

“Oh shit.” McKay sounded panicky. “I’m so sorry, I thought I managed to lead them _away_ from you before they even - ”

“I don’t think his connection to you was what got him into trouble, he just happened to be on the military base when your mutual friend made his move. The demon didn’t show any signs of recognizing him.”

“Oh, well, in that case...” McKay said, sounding distinctly less sympathetic. “Hey, how do you know that?”

John sighed and huddled further into the wall, trying to press his shoulder up towards his ear to minimize the sound reaching him.

“The Major told me,” the city said. It took a couple of seconds for John to realize that it was lying - they hadn’t talked about anything like that, had they? “I would know if he was lying.”

“Okay, listen. I know that we don’t always see eye to... optical sensor, I guess, on certain things, but this is one of those times when I really think you should have consulted me before - ” McKay’s rant was cut short by a knock on the door. The door in question was not the one in the corner that John had entered by. The sound came unmistakably from the big round doorway in the middle of the room.

McKay paled. “Is that...”

“Porthaven door,” the city said, its big dark eyes flickering over to McKay for a second. “I think it’s a soldier.”

Swearing under his breath, McKay patted his pockets. “Okay, I’ll just have to - lower the lights, would you?” From his trouser pocket he fished out what was either the sad remnants of some small furry animal after a cart accident, or...

McKay slipped the horrible furry thing over his lower face and fastened it with two rubber bands behind his ears. The result was what had to be the least cunning disguise in history.

John snorted. “Yup, that’s going to throw everyone off for sure.”

McKay turned to glare at him before moving to the door. “Did anyone ask for your opinion? Know much about camouflage magic, do you? Okay, let’s get it open.” The stone of the doorway lit up with blue light, shining out from the symbols carved into it. There was a scraping sound and then a _woosh_ like a big wave pulling away from shore. McKay took the door handle and dug his heels in to shift the heavy oak door. It creaked open and McKay stuck his head out.

“Yes, young man?” he said, in a quivering elderly voice that might reasonably have fooled someone over the age of four if it weren’t for the fake beard.

“Good morning, sir,” said someone outside with purposeful diction. There were other sounds leaking in, too - people chatting, traffic, all decidedly un-Antarctic noises. John stretched his neck, but couldn’t see past McKay’s shoulder. “Sorry to disturb you, but would the wizard Mer be in?”

“Oh, no, I’m sorry to say that the young master is out on important business at the moment,” McKay creaked, waving his hand about airily. “There is a _war_ on, you know. Can’t let the enemy sit about brainstorming, eh?”

There was a moment of silence, before the voice outside said: “...sure. Well, is it possible that you could relay a message to him? Tell him that his presence is required at court a week from now, by decree of the Queen herself. The objective of the meeting will be to decide the further involvement of sorcerers in the war effort.”

McKay’s hand dipped briefly out and came back with a scroll with a serious-looking red seal on it. “I’ll make sure this reaches the ears of the wizard himself, you may depend on it. Good day to you, young man.” He unceremoniously slammed the door shut. The lights returned, and the blue glow of the gateway ebbed.

“Okay, so that could potentially be really bad,” McKay said, his voice still high and trembling. When he walked back towards John his face was almost unrecognizable and at least forty years older, a mess of wrinkles and warts over the fake beard, which now looked less like a misadventure involving superglue and a badger and more like the scraggly facial hair favored by old men who tend to forget to shave.

“You could just refuse to go, couldn’t you?” the city said placidly. McKay laughed hollowly, only pausing to wince as he pulled on a corner of his fake beard.

“Sure I could. Why don’t I just set fire to myself right now, that would save us all a lot of time and the government the expense of gasoline. Ow.” The beard came off with a _gloop_ sound and McKay, once again looking like himself, performed several interesting facial acrobatics to move his upper lip about.

John was still grappling with an implication put forth by the previous conversation. “You,” he said slowly, “are the wizard Mer. That’s why you weren’t worried about him... you... back in Skarby.”

McKay turned to the glass painting that held the face of the city. “See, what did I tell you? Mind like a buzzsaw, this one. Nothing gets past him.”

“Well, you might have mentioned,” John mumbled, but couldn’t find much ire to put into it.

“Sue me, I imagined you’d be able to puzzle it together. Besides, I don’t exactly like to advertise.” McKay rubbed his face, nearly poking himself in the eye with the scroll he was still holding. “Okay, you know what, this is too much to deal with on an empty stomach. I’ll go make some breakfast. With crunchy bacon and that cheese thing and... do you want some? Since you’re here anyway?”

“Sure,” John said. He wasn’t feeling hungry, but he probably should be, and for now it didn’t look like he’d be summarily kicked out.

“After a shower, maybe,” the city said meaningfully.

John glanced down himself and conceded that he might prefer a meal where demon blood did not feature. “Sounds like an idea.”

“I’ll drop you off at one of the showers, then. Chop, chop, every moment we stand here is a moment without coffee.”

“And you don’t want to see him when he doesn’t get his coffee,” the city added.

John pushed to his feet with uncanny ease, considering he’d only avoided death’s doorstep yesterday by ending up on the wrong porch. His body felt like a thing that was only nominally of any relevance to him. “Lead the way,” he told McKay.

The corridors leading out from the heart of the city lay quiet and empty, opening every so often to larger rooms. Some of them had benches and pillows, apparently to function as meeting places - which John thought was odd, since there was no sign that anyone but McKay had ever been here. It wasn’t the only incongruity of interior design.

“Is this some kind of obscure bonsai technique, or...” John pushed at a ceramic flowerpot with his boot, watching as the withered branches trembled and very nearly crumbled to dust.

“Hm? What?” said McKay, in the faraway voice of a man lost in dreamy contemplation of the morning’s first sip of coffee. Holland would come over like that sometimes; everyone found it best not to speak to him before he’d had at least two cups. “No, of course not, they were like that when I found the place.” He kept striding purposefully down the hallway.

“Found it?” John echoed.

“Yes, of course,” McKay said. “Did you imagine that I just took a high-speed approach to city planning and banged something like this together in a couple of decades without anyone noticing?”

John shrugged. “Hadn’t thought about it, I don’t know anything about magic. I figured they didn’t call it ‘Mer’s’ city without a reason, though.”

McKay made a face. “Yeah, that was... kind of unfortunate. Okay, here we are,” he added, stopping front of a broad door in a material that was either some kind of metal John had never seen before or a spectacularly hard, shiny type of wood. “It’s one of the communal showers, I’m afraid - there are private bathrooms connected to most of the living quarters, but I haven’t had much luck with... anyway.” He waved a hand over a panel on the side of the door and it slid open, revealing a big room with slick white tiles broken up with swirling patterns in tiles morphing from dark blue to turquoise.

McKay waved him inside and then followed him. He gestured towards a doorway further into the room. “Shower’s through there, everything should be self-explanatory. Anything else?”

“...maybe another pair of clothes to put on after?” John said, not exactly cherishing the mental image of scurrying down the endless hallways in search of a clean pair of underpants. McKay blinked a couple of times, and then said, “Oh. Oh, yes, I see - hm. Okay, I’ll go see what I can do. Don’t run off anywhere, okay? And the city’ll know if you do, so there’s no point in trying.”

“Got it,” John said, looking around a bit after McKay hurried off. He felt... almost peaceful, like the world was just an incidental buzz in the back of his head, like he was a balloon whose only bond to the ground was the grip of a child’s hand, liable to let go at any distraction.

There was a mirror in the room before the showers. When John accidentally met his own gaze in it, his irises seemed pale and strange, like glass marbles parading as eyes.

He looked away.

After ten minutes or so McKay came back, tucking a bundle of clothes against his chest. “Will this work?” he asked, holding out what seemed to be an outfit entirely in blacks and grays. “It was the only things I could find that seemed like they would... fit.”

“It’s grand,” John said, taking the clothes. “Thanks.”

“Don’t, uh, mention it. I’ll be going, then. There’s a cup of freshly brewed heaven in my immediate future.” The door slid shut behind him.

John put the bundle of clothes down on one of the room’s long low benches. He managed to strip out of his uniform while touching as little of it as possible, pushing it to one side. There were holes in his t-shirt in roughly the shape of a palm circled by five fingers, but there wasn’t a mark on his chest.

Except there was, he realized - slightly to the left of the center was a circular pattern of darkened skin which... John had once seen a guy who’d survived a lightning strike, and all down his arm had been marks like these, like some strange sleeve tattoo of branches winding down through his skin. The mark wasn’t very big, petering out well before the underside of his collarbone. When he poked at it there wasn’t any pain or other unexpected sensation. He shrugged and grabbed the towel McKay had brought with the clothes.

Whatever McKay’s definition of ‘self-explanatory’ was, it differed from John’s in certain vital areas. The shower room was high-ceilinged like the rest of the city, had the same white and blue tiles as the room outside, and presented nothing so familiar as a showerhead, or even a tap. There were some smaller see-through blue tiles with regular intervals, so he messed around with one of them until it started to glow, and then an eager rush of water dropped from the ceiling and right down at him. It was like dunking himself in an ice stream.

Still shuddering but damned if he was going to wrap the towel around himself to go find McKay and ask for guidance, he stood as far away from the spray as his reach would let him and jabbed at the tiles some more until the one to the left started to change from blue to orange, the water heating as it did. When it stayed comfortably warm for thirty seconds he tentatively stepped in.

The blood on his hands came away slowly, but as the hands felt like they belonged to someone else at the moment he didn’t have to think anything in particular about that. The room didn’t get very steamy - he wondered if there was some unseen ventilation at work or if everything around here was done with magic. Once he’d cleaned his hair of a number of substances he wasn’t too keen on considering, he touched the mark on his chest again. It hadn’t felt any different than the skin around it before, but now that the rest of him was warmed by the water, it seemed too chill against his fingers.

“Oh, don’t worry, that was me,” came the voice of the city, echoing perkily in the shower room. “Nothing to be concerned about, it happens when I have to go through bare flesh. The effect is merely aesthetic, I assure you.”

John jumped and looked around. “You’re in here?” he asked, glancing around for the dark sooty circles of the city’s eyes.

“Oh yes, I can go anywhere in this place,” the city said airily. “Or rather I can again, now. Before there were some areas that were off-limits because we didn’t have the power, but with the boost of a human heart? No problem. Okay, so I just wanted to check in on you without Rodney listening. How are you feeling?”

“I meant that more along the lines of ‘are you watching’,” John said, endeavoring to cover up strategic areas with his hands.

“Yes, yes, of course. It’s easier to judge human communication if you take the data of their body language and facial musculature into account. For example I have a 98,6% success rate for spotting sarcasm, which is pretty impressive for an artificial intelligence. Lots of humans don’t get it at all.”

“Ah. Sure. Good. Would you mind... not watching? Just while I’m...”

“While you’re what?”

“... not wearing any clothes.”

There was a pause, and then the city said: “Oh dearie me, what was I thinking, observing an organic organism without the layers of plant fiber they have judged necessary to cover up the bits that are somehow deemed inappropriate. How rude of me, I’m sure. I don’t _have_ a body, John; yours is hardly of any particular interest to me one way or the other.”

“It’s just that it’d make me feel a lot better about the whole thing,” John said. “It’s... an organic organism quirk.”

“Oh, sure, if it makes you happy. There, I’ve blocked the sensors from the entire electromagnetic spectrum in there. Satisfied?”

“Immensely,” John said, not removing his hands just yet.

“Okay, so if that’s all sorted - how are you feeling? I think I got all the tissue that was damaged by the cold, and I took care of the scratches on your knuckles, too.”

John tried to feel his body. “I’m...” After standing there for a while like a man who has dropped a stone into a deep hole and is still waiting for the sound of it hitting the bottom, he decided on: “Fine.”

“Ah, great. That means your, uh, floorplan, so to say, isn’t all that different from that of your ancestors. I was worrying about that.”

“What’ve my ancestors got to do with anything?” John asked, fumbling to turn the shower off.

“Oh, not yours in particular, I was talking generally. Your ancestors. You being humankind. The ancestors being the people who built this city.”

“Ah,” John said, grabbing the towel and wrapping it around him gratefully.

“... I’m sorry, am I talking too much? Only I’ve been asleep for longer than you can imagine, and when I woke up there was hardly enough power for me to think two things at the same time, and now that I have your heart everything is bright and alive and running again.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” John said, sorting through the pile of new clothes and finding a pair of boxer shorts - gray, a t-shirt - black, a pair of trousers - black - and a complete lack of socks - inexplicable. Everything seemed very crisp, like they were brand new. “McKay’s been here long, then?” he asked, getting into the t-shirt.

“Long enough,” the city said darkly. “Okay, I’m kidding, I’m kidding, he’s not all that bad once you get to know him. In other ways he gets worse, of course,” it amended thoughtfully. “But mostly he’s okay underneath.”

“He didn’t seem very happy to have me here.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” the city said with a strange gravity. “I think he’s just a lot less sure around people than he is with numbers. Don’t worry, he’ll let you stay, I’ll make sure of that.”

“Seeing as my face is probably adorning a wanted poster as we speak,” John muttered, wrapping up the tattered remains of his uniform in the towel.

“That, and you might die if you stay too far away from me for too long. You will probably have to... live here.”

John paused. “Oh, I will, will I?”

“With all probability. Regrettably. Sorry.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“Not right now, no. You should hurry, Rodney’s almost ready with the bacon.” After a short detour to drop off the uniform in a hatch in the wall - “Waste management for potentially harmful material, they’re scattered all over the place” - John managed to find his way to the room McKay was in.

McKay stood with the closest thing to a bucket-sized mug John had ever seen in one hand and a spatula in the other, humming to himself as bacon sizzled on a flat, dark surface that had to be some kind of stove top. “Mm mhm mm... as I was a-walk-ing - oh, Major, good timing there, I think it’s done.” He tapped on the side of the stove and the sizzling immediately abated. He scooped the bacon over on a plate, swiped over the stovetop with a few haphazard strokes of a dishtowel, and the surface lay there shiny and clean as if by magic. Which, admittedly, was probably involved. Nancy would have committed small but significant acts of treason to get something like that.

“I hate to spring counter-information on you here, but it’s probably not ‘Major’ anymore,” John said, shuffling inside the kitchen on bare feet. The kitchen was small and cosy-looking, the walls a warm, subdued yellow rather than blue-green.

“What? What are you talking about?” McKay said, suggesting by tone of voice that John was standing unwisely between McKay and more coffee.

“All clues they’ll find back on the base is going to suggest I killed my CO,” John said. “It’s the kind of thing that murders your career opportunities.”  

McKay paused with the mug halfway to his mouth, eyes skeptical over the rim of it. “And _did_ you kill your CO?”

“Not really, no.”

“I can confirm that,” the city said, its eyes appearing on one of the kitchen cabinets.

“Well, then it can probably wait until after breakfast.” McKay slumped into one of the two chairs by the tiny table. The window it stood in front of overlooked a snowbank drifting slowly past. John sat down across from him, scanning the haphazardly laid table. Then he hurried to grab a piece of toast, since McKay put away three slices with impressive speed and then went in for seconds.

The toast’s texture was a bit too close to coal for John’s preferences, but he heaped on some butter and jam and then you could hardly taste the ash at all. McKay ate with an enthusiasm and absorption that was either heartening or worrying, washing everything down with great quantities of coffee. After a while John gave up on his own breakfast and just marveled quietly, turning a silvery saltshaker around and around in his hands to give them something to do.

“So - do you want me to drop you off somewhere specific?” McKay asked finally, through a mouthful of egg and bacon.

“Hm?” John looked up from the almost hypnotic motion of the saltshaker.

McKay waved his hand around while he swallowed. “I mean, I could get you to Skarby, but if it were me I’d want to go somewhere, you know, less depressing and full of unemployed coal miners.”

“Um... ” John said.

“I can do you the capital, one of the smaller coastal cities... maybe a village in the midlands in case you’re feeling like something, what’s the polite word, _rural_ , just to get a softer transitioning from where you’ve been staying...”

“I think you’re forgetting how he’s essentially a fugitive,” the city commented from its vantage point beside the cooker hood. “And he doesn’t have any way of proving his innocence yet, either.”

McKay’s face scrunched up with thought before he started buttering up another slice of toast. “Hm. That does add an extra layer to the whole thing, doesn’t it. Well, I’m sure we’ll manage to find you somewhere safe to lay low for a while.”

John glanced over at the dark sooty eyes on the cabinet, raising his eyebrows. It seemed as good a time to break the news as any.

“Actually,” the city said slowly, venturing out over the thinning ice, “actually... I was thinking he should stay here.”

McKay hovered mid-slice. “Really. Here.”

“Uh-huh. I mean, it’s not as though we don’t have the space.”

McKay made some noises that could have been intended as laughter, then stopped and put down his food. “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were kidding. You see, I figured you _had_ to be kidding, because that’s the worst idea I’ve heard since that time Derek Kavanagh tried to suggest - ”

“How is it a bad idea?”

“Oh, gee, let me think. Don’t you think we have _enough_ on our plates if we’re not going to be hiding a known fugitive as well? Um, no offense, I’m sure you’re innocent and all, but... you know.”

John accepted the not-really-an-apology-at-all by magnanimously holding his palms up.

“Well, this is really the one place no one’s ever going to find him, isn’t it? It’s an excellent solution, I don’t see how it could be a problem.”

“How nice for you! I, on the other hand, am the one who _has_ to see the problems coming, because it seems I am the person who tends to have to deal with them when shit hits the fan!”

“I could make myself useful,” John said, recognizing that the city wasn’t exactly selling this thing. “Do whatever you’re too busy to do yourself. I could be the odd job man around the place.”

“Oh, yes, because your expertise of shooting at things and making your bed really neatly is going to come in _so_ handy when dealing with ridiculously advanced magitech in varying states of disrepair,” McKay said acidly.

“Rodney,” the city said.

“After all my degrees are only there because I thought my name looked lonely, all bare and unadorned like that, and any layman could come in and bang things with a wrench and that’ll do the trick!”

“Rodney,” the city said.

Like a man seeing the end of his rope rapidly approaching, McKay continued: “Because these last few months haven’t been crazy enough, with the - and then the - almost getting - and the whale! - and now, what I really feel a need for is the added complications of - ”

“Rodney, he has the gene.”

“ - evading law enforcement on several - _what?_ ”

“He has the gene,” the city said, with the smugness of someone who knows they’ve played the winning card. McKay stared hard at the kitchen cabinet, then at John, then back at the cabinet.

“You’re serious,” he said in a flat voice.  

“Completely. He has the strongest manifestation I’ve ever seen in a human.”

McKay looked at John with much the same expression as he’d bestowed upon the coffee. It looked a little like blind lust, except with more sincerity. John carefully made sure the bread basket was between them.

“You have the blood of the Ancients,” McKay said slowly.

“I don’t know. Is it some kind of illness?”

“Well, well, well,” McKay continued to himself, ignoring John completely. He stood up and took his plate over to the sink, unusually quiet. John glanced over at the cabinet door the city was projecting itself onto and got what had to be a wink. “Apparently fate works in mysterious ways.”

“You’re telling me,” John said, glancing out the window to distant snowdrift after distant snowdrift.

There was a light touch to his shoulder.

“Come with me, Major,” McKay said, his eyes glittering disconcertingly. “I think I’ve got something to show you.”

 


	4. In which John is mostly confused

 

“Okay, now try this one,” McKay said, pushing a strange spherical object across the table.

“Is this really necessary?” John asked. “ You’ve established that it works, haven’t you?”

McKay just waved him on, so he sighed and picked it up. It immediately started emitting a whirring noise, growing warm under his touch.

“Ooooh,” McKay cooed, pulling a shiny jet black tablet to him over the desk and dragging his fingers over it with lightning speed.

“Is it supposed to make that noise?” John asked. “Only I’ve heard grenades sound like that just before they blow.”

“This is _incredible_ ,” McKay said rapturously. “I poked at that thing for _ages_ and nothing happened, and here you come waltzing in and it just lights up like a little beam of sunlight. Hm, that’s interesting.”

“Is it supposed to get this warm?” John moved the thing around in his hands because it was starting to feel uncomfortably hot under his fingertips.

McKay peered up at him. “Oh, I’d probably let go of that thing if I were you, it’s going to take the skin right off your fingers if it keeps going. It’s a heating device, I think – like a really concentrated radiator.”

“You might have mentioned,” John hissed, letting the thing fall to the desk with a _thunk_. It went quiet again.

McKay rolled his eyes. “Most toddlers have the sense to let go of things that burn them, I guess I just overestimated you there.” After poking at his tablet some more he pushed the sphere over to join the growing heap of objects John had already initialized. “I think I got all the data I need on that too, well done.”

“I aim to please,” John said, shaking his hand and surreptitiously blowing on his fingertips.

“Mhmm,” McKay said, deep in concentration.

“You’re taking this surprisingly well, Rodney,” the city said from a big screen in the corner of the lab McKay had dragged John to. “Didn’t you have yourself tested for the gene _three times_ before you gave up?”

“Oh, sure, I’d be green with envy if this weren’t the furthest anyone has ever gotten in understanding Ancient technology,” McKay said haughtily. “Besides, I don’t _need_ the gene if I have the Maj – uh, Sheppard here to initialize it – which is the easiest part of the whole ordeal, it’s not as though it takes any sort of skill. Making sense of all this, on the other hand…”

“So I can stay, then,” John said, amused despite himself by the blatant kid-in-a-candy-shop glee on McKay’s face as he scanned the objects on the table.

“Of course you can stay, as long as you like, forever – just _look_ at this, it’s amazing, I can’t even decide where to start.”

“Do you need me here for that, or can I go see if the world ended during the century or so I’ve spent down here?”

“You have no poetry in your soul, Sheppard,” McKay said cheerfully. “This might just be the beginning of the greatest discovery humanity has ever made.”

John poked at a couple of the objects on the table. “Oh yeah – magic razorblades, a radio, a nightlight that can strobe in all the colors of the rainbow, not to mention,” he picked up the scary bladed contraption that had almost taken his nose off and twiddled it, “what is either a blender or a really terrifying hand weapon…  I see we’re changing the course of history here.”

McKay lifted a finger excitedly. “Ah ah, you’re not seeing the big picture.”

“Not a big picture kind of guy, really.”

“I can’t imagine. Could you hand me the, uh, ‘nightlight’ thing again? I think it might be a device for studying the properties of visible light.” McKay beamed as the thing lit up in John’s hand, and this time it kept glowing when John handed it over. “If it goes on like this, they’ll run out of prestigious prizes to give me within a month of me publishing the first article.”

“I’m sure they’ll come up with something. I’m free to wander off on my own, then?”

“Sure, sure, the AI could show you around, make sure you don’t step off any balconies or anything like that. Right?” He glanced up at the city’s dark eyes on the screen.

“You don’t need my help here?” the city said, flickering over to another screen.

“Oh yes, because you’ve proven so useful up to now,” McKay mumbled, not exactly nasty but with a definite edge. The city didn’t say anything.

“So I’ll be going, then,” John said into the silence.

“Hm, yes, go ahead, see you… later.” The euphoria had sort of been sandpapered off the set of his shoulders, though, and his face had lost some of the glow.

“Have fun,” John said, making a beeline for the door before he was called back to touch a nose hair clipper or whatever was next in the boxes McKay had stacked beside his desk.  

“I will. Now, let’s see… Okay, none of this is making any sense, but it’s not making any sense in a very interesting way so I guess that’s still a plus,” he heard McKay mutter behind him right before the door slid shut.

\-------

John walked around a while at random, sticking his head into rooms that were all abandoned and spare.  He found more signs that there had been people here once – small forests of the wizened potted plants, rooms with beds and couches and, as McKay had promised, inlaid water, though when John tried a couple of taps nothing happened. The beds were all stripped to the bare mattress, and there were no personal belongings. It was as though there had been a methodical evacuation, peeling away all layers that could hint to the presence of life and leaving the city with only the bare bones of itself.

Occasionally he would come upon a big glass door that opened onto a balcony, but since the landscape beyond the doors was the same endless sheet of snow he’d almost died in yesterday he wasn’t too keen on getting one open.  

The city didn’t speak to him while he walked – John figured that had been a bad moment with McKay back in the lab – but occasionally a door would slide politely shut before he reached it, or a particular flight of stairs would light up as he entered a new floor. Nothing was following him through the quiet corridors, but his spine still tightened with the sensation of being hunted. He found himself walking quickly, hurrying down long empty corridor to get to the illogical safety of a door sliding shut behind him.

After a while he started purposefully climbing upwards, making his way up the central tower and stopping now and then to watch the view of the rest of the city from different angles. Since the Antarctic darkness out there still shrouded most of the structures, he mainly saw lights twinkling in the distance. It hit him just how far away they were – just how big this place had to be, if the lights of the outer towers were barely visible from the center. He stopped between floors to look at it again and again, but he still couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Climbing from the bottom of the tower to the top took a long time, but he didn’t have anywhere else to be and it felt better to be in movement, to have no space in which to think.  

By the time he reached the top his legs were aching, muscles twitching as he edged himself onto the landing of the final floor. He was slightly out of breath – that had been, what, eighty floors? More? He’d lost count after the fortieth or so.  After a minute to collect himself he went to the landing’s single door, waved at the door panel and peeked inside.

The room was open and stretched for the entirety of the tower’s width and breadth, making it octagon-shaped and with enough clear floor space to serve as a dance hall. The high slanted ceiling was entirely in glass, making him feel eerily unprotected against the open sky, like there were things up there he couldn’t see, just waiting to swoop down and snatch him. John went over to the side where the ceiling was lowest, but of course there was nothing but snow and darkness outside.

You got an impressive view of the city from up here, though; between the ceiling and the windows around the wall you could see the entire thing in a panorama that would have been more impressive if the darkness didn’t make sure it was like gazing at faraway fireflies.

“I know what you’re thinking,” the city suddenly said near his ear. “What kind of power source could possibly maintain all this, right?”

“…not really, but good point,” John said, not looking around. He wasn’t going to jump every time it pulled that trick.

“Oh. Oh, well, what were you wondering about, then?”

“How do you know I was wondering about anything?”

“Oh, please, your entire race has never even dreamt of a construction like this, much less created anything to rival it. You’d have to be dead not to be the least bit curious.”

John actually hadn’t been before now, he’d just wanted to get away – not from anything, exactly, just _away_. He considered matters now. “So what was that about, back in the lab?” he asked finally.

“What, you mean Rodney being a jerk? Oh, that’s a daily happening, wouldn’t want to miss it.”

“I can believe that.”

He got a sense of uneasiness off the city’s whispery voice. “Don’t you want to know about the structure of the base plane or how the power is transported down the hallways? This thing is designed to float on water, the engineering that goes into ensuring it’s not pulled apart by tidal forces is incredible.”

John shrugged. “Sure, if you want to tell me about that. I just figured that if I’d been stuck in here with one person for a long time, I’d like to have someone else to vent to.”

“Rodney can be difficult,” the city said slowly, “but then again, so can I.”

“Didn’t seem very nice to call you useless, though.”

“The problem is, he’s right,” the city sighed. “I’m not much use these days. Most of my memory networks are stripped right down or disabled somehow, the vast majority of the city’s non-vital systems are inaccessible to me, and what little I do remember how to do I can’t explain. We’ve been trying to retrieve the information in various ways, but nothing seems to work. He might be an asshole about it sometimes, but he’s tried very hard to help me. He’s _trying_ very hard.”  

John glanced over his shoulder. “Wait, so you’re amnesiac or something right now? That kind of thing happens to demons – I mean, to things like you?”

“I don’t know. It might just be a fluke, or a damage that occurred during the ages I spent sleeping. It might all be encrypted and stowed away and we just haven’t figured out how to recover it. Your ancestors might have cleaned my memory of most things except the very basic functions of the city before they left – a safety precaution in case the city ever fell into the wrong hands, maybe. I just know that when I woke up, I was a total blank. Literally. I’ve had to reconstruct the ability to use language by talking to Rodney and using information from his tablets – in the beginning I had no words, so he’d have to interact directly with the mainframe. Because of our current power situation it took me two months to be up to speed. You know how long that is with the kind of processing power I’ve got behind me?”

“Not a clue,” John said honestly.

“No, you really, really don’t. If I were a human I’d be practically comatose.”

They were both silent as the view drifted past outside. Then John said: “Well, you’re still getting this whole thing to move, that’s something.”

“Actually that’s the easiest thing to do – the only reason we’re going this slow is that I haven’t got the power to bring us up to the intended speed. If we were all souped up I could take us to the capital within an hour, easy.”

“That is impressive.”

“Yes, it is, thank you for noticing.” John was relieved to hear a certain smugness there; all they needed was a depressed spirit in charge of the ancient city currently floating slowly over the world’s largest ice-covered wasteland. “And now that I’ve got your heart, I think I can make some changes around here, find out about things. It’s old magic, older than the stuff your ancestors used to build this place. If they’ve tried to keep secrets, I should be able to crack them.”

“I’m glad it can be of use to _someone_ ,” John said, craning his neck as if that would help him see further. “Where exactly are we right now, anyway?”

“So far away from anywhere you wouldn’t find it on any map.”

“Right.” He turned away from the window, the sky pressing down on him through the ceiling. “And where are we going?”

“You’d have to ask Rodney, he’s the one who took us here. He didn’t tell me why. Right now I’m just keeping us moving and out of anyone’s way.”

There was another door apart from the one John came in by. It turned out to lead into something like a closet. It was empty, but there was a screen on the wall, showing the layout of the city as seen from above. There were pinpoints of light spread across the map, one of the ones near the center outlined with a circle and a couple of sweeping lines. ‘You are here’, most likely.

“What are you doing?” the city asked.

“I don’t know. Why is there a map in here?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. There are similar rooms scattered all over the city. They’re probably storage areas of some kind.”

“That much I figured. What’re the lights supposed to do?” John asked, touching the screen experimentally.

“I have no idea, so maybe you shouldn’t – “

There was a flash of light and the feeling of ice water down his spine, and John pulled his hand away quickly. “Shit. Okay, what did I do?”

There wasn’t any answer. John hurriedly stepped out of the closet again, hoping against hope that he hadn’t just unleashed an ancient spell or something – that seemed to be how his life was going these days.

As soon as he stepped outside he realized that something wasn’t right. He blinked against the half-light of the room, which was… not the same room he’d been in before.

“John? John, is that you? Oh, there you are, you gave me such a scare,” the city’s voice said close by.

The glass ceiling was gone, as was the expansive view. In fact the windows of this room – which was actually more of a short corridor – had a direct line of sight to the main tower. John stared at the distant lights from the room he’d just been in.

“What the hell was that?” he asked faintly.

“Well, _I_ don’t know, one moment your bio signature is registering loud and clear and then wham, you’re gone! I spent three seconds at least just freaking out before I thought to check for you somewhere else, and then I see you’re in the southern sector and – “

John went over to the window to be really sure of what he was seeing. “I moved from up there to here in, what, a second flat?”

“Basically, yes. Now that you’ve activated the system I have some insight – I think it’s the transportation network. The city’s too big to be practically traversed by foot, so it makes sense they’d have other ways. From what the sensors tell me it works by breaking you down to your basic molecules and then –no, you know what, here’s all you need to know: it’s done by magic. It’s a magical elevator.”

“Ah.” ‘Breaking you down’ and ‘basic molecules’ have an ominous ring to them at any time, and in this setting it only got worse.

“It’s kind of interesting, actually. I think the whole thing’s online now, too, except for a couple of damaged ones further out.”

A thought hit John. “Does McKay know about this?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t know about it until just now.”

“On a scale of one to ten, how likely is he to have a heart attack from pure excitement when he finds out?”

“One can only hope,” the city sniped. If it really had relearned to talk with McKay’s help, it showed. “Yes, okay, go ahead, you should tell him. There’s a transporter close to the lab he’s in, you could try to use it again.”

“Okay, so which one would that be?” John asked, examining the small flecks of light on the screen. One blazed up more strongly than the others. “Thanks.” This time there was no sensation and no flash of light; one moment he was standing in the southern part of the city, and then he was three doors down from the lab where he’d left McKay. John made his way there, waving at the door panel to be let in.

“Hey, McKay – “ But McKay was breathing deeply and slowly where he was slumped forward on the work table, his head pillowed on his arms. “Oh.”

“I don’t think he slept much last night,” the city said quietly. “I’d just let him be if I were you. Unless _you_ want to deal with him when he gets cranky.”

“I wouldn’t like him when he’s cranky, huh?” John muttered, backing discreetly out into the corridor again and letting the door slide shut.

There was a sound very much like a snort. “I suppose you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference.”

“I’m amazed.” John shifted from foot to foot. The restlessness was catching up with him again. “I guess I’m coming down to the gate room again, then.”  The city didn’t suggest using the transporter and he was grateful; even though he had traversed what felt like half a marathon’s worth of stairs today his body was still telling him to keep moving. Once he reached the gate room, he poked around there too, found out where all the corridors lead, tried to figure out what the different work stations were for, studied the stone gateway.

“Don’t you want to sit down or something?” the city said eventually, after patiently explaining that no, none of these controls were made for a death beam and no, you couldn’t steer the city from here.

“Not particularly, no. What’s this for?”

“It raises the gate shield. No, no, don’t press it – okay, do _you_ know where to get a new power source?  Because as long as that thing’s up we’re wasting power, wasting – thank you. I mean, don’t you humans have to take breaks between operations or something like that?”

“It’s called sleeping, and I did a fair bit of that last night, remember?” John looked more closely at the symbols on the pushbuttons beside the pad that raised the shield and found that they were the same as the symbols carved into the doorway. Interesting.

“No, I mean, just… resting and taking on fuel and… stuff. You people don’t make much sense to me, but that seems to be a thing that – wait. Something’s happening.”

Down by the doorway the symbols started glowing again, one by one.

“What’s – ” John began.

“Sssh, be quiet for a minute.” The symbols all lit up together and then went dark again. The glass painting seemed to glow brighter for a second. “Okay, I think I got that.”

“Got what?”

“Sorry, I haven’t got time to explain it to you. I need to get Rodney to take a look at this right away. Hang on, I’ll go and guide him to the closest transporter,” the city said, voice getting fainter as it spoke as if moving away.

A minute or so later McKay came stumbling down the corridor, red faced and hissing. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been braving those stairs for _months_ and there are transporters littered all over?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t remember,” the city said airily. John was relatively sure it was lying through its teeth, or whatever it had in the place of teeth. Wires, maybe. “Must’ve been in the disabled pathways, I apologize for the inconvenience.”

“Oh yeah, you sound all kinds of apologetic there, well done. Okay, what was it you wanted me to have a look at?”

“I just intercepted a crystal ball transmission from the SGC, I thought you might want to have a look. It’s up on the main screen right now.” The main screen flickered to life, and strange angular writing John had never seen before started to scroll down the page.

“Looks like the same encryption they’ve been using all the time, doesn’t it?” McKay said, bending over a workstation and pushing buttons. “Think you can break it?”

“Of course, they’re not going to change their basic approach much if they don’t know they’ve been compromised. Hold on for just a… there, that should do it.”

The screen flickered again and new symbols appeared. It still looked like a mess of lines to John, but McKay made a thoughtful sound as his eyes moved down the page.

“Well, this can’t be right,” McKay said after a while.

“Hey, it’s not my intel, I just pick up what they send.”

“I mean, the Waste isn’t exactly under heavy surveillance or anything but surely you couldn’t… not undetected, that’s ridiculous, it couldn’t… could it?”  

John, who was getting the impression that McKay’s notion of a dialogue was a monologue without a sense of direction, opted to keep his silence.

“It would be pretty bad, if it were true,” the city said finally.

McKay snorted. “And the prize for understatement of the year goes to… ” He trailed off, tapping his fingers against his thigh anxiously. “I should go check it out, shouldn’t I.”

“Do you really think it’s safe to – ”

“Well, probably not, but it would be even less safe to be in the dark about it, wouldn’t it? Come on, would I be volunteering to go if it weren’t, you know. Reasonably risk free?”

“Probably not,” the city said hesitantly. “But even if it isn’t true the Waste in itself can be – “  

“I’ll take precautions,” McKay interrupted. “Maybe I can get the information some other way, I might not even need to go there in person. I’ll need to hurry, though.”  He went over to the console with the symbols that matched the ones on the gate and pressed a series of them, seemingly at random. The doorway lit up.

“Okay, if you really think it’s necessary,” the city said.

“I wish I didn’t, believe me,” McKay said, rooting around on his desk and sticking a variety of things into his pockets. He turned to John. “You wouldn’t happen to have your gun on you, would you?”

“No, the demon took it with him. Sorry,” John added when McKay’s face fell like an elevator with its wires cut. “I could come with you, if you’d like. Wherever it is you’re going.”

“No, no, don’t be stupid, there needs to be someone here in case of…” He gestured distractedly but the rest of that sentence still appeared to elude him.

John helped him out. “Just generally in caseness, huh?”

“Something like that. The portal’s established, right?”

“Uh-huh,” the city said, without enthusiasm. “For the record I’d just like to say that I think this is a bad idea. I’ll bookmark it in the log so that I can use it as proof when I bring out the ‘what did I say’.”

“This will all end in tears, that’s how bones get broken, don’t go swimming within half an hour of eating, yadda yadda,” McKay said, looking decidedly less debonair than his tone would suggest. He wrung his hands a couple of times, looked into thin air and then startled into motion. John followed him down the gate room stairs for lack of anything better to contribute to the situation.

“Do you have everything you need?” the city asked as McKay pulled the door open. Behind it was a shimmering blue substance, like the rippling surface of a pond.

“Probably not.” McKay squared his shoulders, then did it again when they collapsed down into a hopeless slump.

“I’ve updated your tablet with everything I thought might come in handy.”

“Right. Thank you. I’ll be going, then.” He didn’t budge an inch. “Isn’t anyone going to say anything?”

“Good luck, I guess,” John said.

“You guess?” McKay glared.

“Well, since no one sees fit to tell me about anything that happens around here, I don’t know where you’re going. For all I know you’re off to meet your tax man.”

McKay rolled his eyes at him. “I was thinking something more along the lines of ‘No, no, you can’t do this, you’re being far too brave’, but thank you very much for the rousing support. Okay, I’m going through.”

“Be careful,” the city said in a small voice, and McKay jerked a nod and stepped through the blue surface. When he was through it collapsed behind him, and the space behind the door was once again filled by nothing more than the view of the other side of the room.

“So what was that all about?” John said, when the silence had gone on for suitably long.  

“Remember how all you needed to know about how the transporters work was that they were magic?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this is a magic door.”

“Seeing as it has consistently opened to everywhere _except_ the landscape outside, I’d sort of figured that much.”

“And much like a normal door, it can be open or it can be closed, right? And when it’s closed, nothing can get through, but when it’s open, things can pass – ”

“Listen, if you dumb this down any more I’ll have to do something drastic.”

“Right, right.  Long story short, it allows different kinds of radiation and magical impulses through when it’s open as well as solid matter, so if you know what you’re doing you can intercept messages being transmitted. This one’s programmed to open if one of its sister gates detects unusual energy readings.”

“What kind of messages?”

“Telling you might very well amount to treason,” the city said haughtily.

John rolled his eyes. “And we wouldn’t want that.”

“Exactly.”

“Listen, I get that you want to be careful, but I might end up staying here for a while, and this whole secrecy thing could get old very quickly. You know I’m not a Genii spy or anything, right?”

“It’s not the Genii we’re worried about,” the city said. “There might be something... worse that has started to unfold.”

John held up a warning finger. “See, that, right there? That _ominous_ pause? That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. What are you going to do, start speaking in code when there’s something I shouldn’t know about?”

The city heaved a deep sigh. “Listen, we don’t even know exactly what it is we know, okay? It might be nothing. It might be something! Knowing about it - if, and I stress the if here, the ‘it’ is actually something - might get you into all kinds of trouble! Either way you’ll be told when you need to be told and that’s the end of it.”

Having been spoken to by what was essentially a very old and complicated machine as if he were a five year old being sent to bed without supper, John decided to let this battle lie for the time being. “Right.”

After a while the city said, in a slightly bashful tone: “Well, he probably won’t be coming back for a while, so you might as well grab some sleep in the meantime.”

“It’s night already?”

“Near enough. And you’ve had a rough few days.”

“It hasn’t been a trip or anything, but I’ve had worse.”

“Well, you need the sleep. Just lay down wherever and I’ll keep an eye out while you’re out of commission.”

John scratched his neck. “Not that the wall wasn’t doing me very well last night, but I can’t see it becoming a habit. A bed would be nice?”

“Oh. Well, I guess we can find somewhere for you to stay. You could say we have rooms to spare.”

“So where does McKay sleep?” John asked.

“Mostly he doesn’t. And when he does he usually nods off over one of the control consoles in the gate room. He does have his own room, he just doesn’t use it much.”

“How about somewhere close by, in case McKay comes back and needs...”

“Well, there’s this, of course,” the city interrupted, and John jerked back as the wall beside him shifted and folded and revealed a small cot set into the wall. “The night crew used to sleep here if they needed to keep staff here overnight, I think.”

“It looks positively cozy,” John said. “I might have to tuck my legs to my chest to get room, of course, but otherwise…”

“Oh, stop complaining and try it, it’s bigger than it looks.”

John lay down and found this to be true; it wasn’t a luxurious double bed or anything, but he could lie comfortably without any pieces of him touching the sides. “Yeah, okay, this isn’t that bad, actually.”

“See, I told you. Rodney keeps some blankets and pillows and things like that up by the computer terminals for when he works up there, you could grab some of those.”  

John came back with the blankets and put one down as a sheet over the bare mattress before sitting down, bouncing experimentally. He’d certainly slept in worse places. He wouldn’t even have to worry about sand having gotten into unmentionable places first thing after waking up.

“This works,” he said when he’d laid down. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. I don’t like it when you’re too far away from the gate room, it feels like your heart remembers it’s supposed to be somewhere else.”

John fumbled the covers up over himself, trying to find a comfortable position. It felt strange to not have a weapon anywhere near him while he slept; he felt practically naked. He hadn’t gotten out of the habit of keeping his gun on the nightstand even when he arrived at Sumner’s base, where Colonel Whimshall’s drunken renditions of crude folk songs had been the most troublous feature.

“Hey, are you still there?” he said after a while.

“I’m always here. Did you want something?”

“How did you know about the attack on the base?” John asked, studying the patterns in the ceiling of the cot.

“Hm?”

“You told McKay about it this morning, but I never said anything to you about that.”

“You mean you really don’t know? John, it was right at the forefront of your heart when I took it, there wasn’t really any way for me to ignore it.”

“Oh. So you’ve got my memories now,” John said, wincing slightly at the thought.

“Some,” the city said, “but only the most pressing, and only what’s bobbing on the surface. I’m not kidding, I’m almost afraid it’ll fall apart if I look at it too hard.”

“That’s uplifting,” John muttered, letting his head fall back into the pillow.

“It’s not so strange, considering the kind of battering it’s taken.”

“Hey, for open heart surgery with a demon hand, it wasn’t so bad,” John said.

“That’s not what I meant.”

The golden glow from the glass painting ebbed and grew like a real fire, the only moving thing in the whole city.

“You don’t have to worry, it’s not as though I’m going to tell anyone. Besides, the heart doesn’t remember like the mind does; there aren’t always coherent narratives to follow. You don’t get much useful information, just... impressions, you know? Like just now, there was a flash of this man – Colonel… Sumner,” the city said slowly. “Right? He was the severe one who didn’t like you much.”

“Does it matter? He’s dead.”

“Well, it bothered you, didn’t it? That he treated you like you were in the wrong when you went back for your – ”

“Let me rephrase that – it doesn’t matter, because he’s dead.”

“You tried to save him.”

“’Tried’ being the key word in that sentence.”

“…you really feel that way, don’t you? You really believe you are more at fault for not being able to save him than the demon is for killing him.”

“Listen,” John said, sitting up and glaring into the darkness, “I don’t really want to talk about it, okay?”

“How would you know?” the city said.

John didn’t answer.

“You should get some sleep,” the city said after a long while, sounding somewhere half-way between a mother hen and someone who doesn’t want to spook a skittish animal. John lay down again, pulling the covers up over his shoulders. The cold had gnawed its way into his bones again.

“Yeah,” he said, trying to find a comfortable position. After a period of looking up into the ceiling of the cot he added: “You didn’t tell McKay about our little deal.”

The city was quiet for a while. “I will,” it said. “Eventually. It’s… I’m not sure how he’ll react. He might not know the full extent of what I am.”

“So you’ve lied to him.”

“No. _I’m_ not all that sure about what I am yet, either.”

“Isn’t that just life all over,” John said philosophically. His own breathing sounded too loud to him.

“John?” the city said after a while.

“M-hm?”

“It wasn’t your fault, you know. I don’t know if anyone has ever bothered to tell you that. I just wanted you to hear it.”

When John said nothing the city didn’t make any follow-ups, and soon enough John drifted off to the large empty quiet of the city.

\------

In his dream the ocean is lit up by the shimmering, silvery lines of whale song, winding through the water like curls of smoke. It reverberates deep in his bones, shakes something in him loose and sets it to humming.  

The dark shadows of the whales pass by outside the windows, gliding ponderously in a strange parody of flight.

Beneath the waves the city sleeps, and dreams, and waits.

\------

When he woke up the next morning John considered staying in bed for the foreseeable future right up until the city noticed the shift in his life signs and told him in a bright, brittle sort of way that it had put the coffee pot on, rise and shine. He poured himself a mug and found that the coffee had the consistency and color of an oil spill, but since he didn’t have the heart to say so in the face of the city’s immense pride in its domestic prowess, he drank it anyway.

“Thanks,” he managed between sips. He wouldn’t be surprised if there were trace elements of caffeine in his hair after this.

“Oh, don’t mention it, I’ve seen Rodney do it a million times. Do you want to use the stove? Because I could get the stove going for you.”

“Thanks, this is fine. So McKay hasn’t come back yet, then?”

The city flickered back and forth between kitchen fronts. “No. No, not yet. But it’s really no wonder, he hasn’t been gone that long and he’d probably have to make some preparations before he could… No.”

“Right.” John caught his own reflection in the window and realized his stubble was quickly gaining ground across his lower face. If he’d had a razor he might have tried shaving it off before he started to look like something freshly in from the wild, but he didn’t know where McKay kept a razor and figured it wouldn’t be very polite to just use it without permission. Oh well, maybe hobo might turn out to not be such a bad look on him. “So do we have any plans for today?”

“What?”

“Well, there’s no point in just sitting around here waiting, is there? Might as well make ourselves useful in the meantime. Is there anything that needs doing?”

The city hovered uncertainly from cabinet to cabinet. “Some of the flooded sections of the city need some tidying up, I suppose. And we could get rid of the old plants, I think they’re actually mummified by now. We could start there, get in some new flowers, maybe?”

John squinted. “I’m not much of a gardener.”

“Well, around here _I_ take care of the watering and everything like that, so it shouldn’t be a problem once we’ve got them planted. It’ll brighten the place up.”

“Okay.”

“And if the oxygen recyclers stop working again it might buy you half an hour before you asphyxiate,” the city said, not quite under its breath.

“Right,” John said, interest in discovering some green fingers renewed. He spent the morning heaving the heavy pots from various corners of the city to transporters and from there to the gate room.

“How many more of these are there?” he panted after bringing the twentieth one into the gate room and putting it with the others.

“A lot,” the city said cheerfully. “But I guess we could take care of these first.”

John started in on the withered branches. They were surprisingly hard and tough, as if the wood had shrunk in to become iron.

“D’you think these could be used for something?” he asked, testing the strength of one branch by trying to break it over his thigh. It almost snapped his leg off, but the branch stayed perfectly intact.

“Apparently you have found a way to injure yourself on them,” the city said as John jumped around on one foot, “but I suppose there could be more constructive applications, too.”

“Hopefully, because we’re going to have a lot of them when we’re done.” John threw the branch down with the others on the sheet he’d put down for the purpose.

“If it comes to it, we’ll just dial the gate to somewhere in the middle of nowhere and – ”

As if on cue the gate scraped into life, making John jump. Everything had been so quiet all morning, apart from the whisper of the city.

“Kingshaven door,” the city declared.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There’s someone outside,” the city said patiently.

“What do they want?”

“Considering they’re ringing the doorbell, I assume they’re trying to get your attention.”

“Should I open it?”

“That’s what a door is for, isn’t it?”

“I meant,” John said, “that opening the door while wearing the face of a known fugitive…”

There was a slight whirring sound, like a machine being cranked up a level. “Well, when you put it like that… okay, come stand in front of the window for a moment. Good, now reach out your hand.”

“Okay, what are you – ow!” John jerked his hand back and found a burn in the shape of a circle with lots of fiddly-looking bits around it.

“Sorry, sorry, I should have warned you, it’ll fade. Okay, I’ve put a glamour on you to change how you look, but it’s really quick and dirty so you better deal with whatever it is pretty quickly. Come on, open the door.”

Still shaking his hand reproachfully John went over to the door and opened it.

“Hello?” he said, sticking his head out the doorway and into the cacophony of sounds coming from a bustling street. On the doorstep stood a slightly stocky guy with thinning hair. He wore a crumpled-looking lab coat under his jacket and the slightly dimwitted smile of the hopelessly well-meaning.

“Um – this is Doctor McKay’s place, right?” the guy said, guilelessly trying to look over John’s shoulder and into the gloom.

“Uh-huh,” John said, positioning himself to block the line of sight. “He’s not in right now, though.”

“Right,” the guy said, looking at John oddly over the edge of his glasses. “And you would be…?”

“Oh, I’m just, you know…”

_cat sitting_ , hissed the city inside his head.

“Cat sitting,” John said dutifully. “He had to go away for a couple of days and he asked me to… take care of his cat.”

The man – the name badge on his lab coat proclaimed him to be ‘Dr William Lee’ – squinted at him. “Right,” he repeated, doubt edging his voice. “I thought he’d left his cat with a neighbor when he moved here, but...”

With a stunning and uncharacteristic onset of acting ability John elaborated: “Yeah, well, she developed an allergy or something, so he had to go get it back. I water the plants, too,” he added as an extra touch, and the guy nodded understandingly.

“I know exactly what you’re talking about, allergies can be funny like that. Before I could eat curry ‘til my eyes watered, all day every day, but nowadays just sniffing at a chili makes my stomach go all – ”

“Is there anything I could help you with, even if he’s not here?”

The guy looked slightly distressed. “Oh, I don’t know… I mean, it’s a pretty serious-looking document, I’m not sure I’m supposed to hand it over to anyone except Rodney.”

“I take in his mail, if that’s any help,” John invented wildly.

“Weeell… you know what, I’m sure it’s all right. Hang on a minute…” The guy retrieved a familiar-looking scroll with a red seal from his bag. “Just tell him that Colonel Carter said he ought to come, okay? That should do the trick. Well, she _actually_ said that he better well come or she’ll send Teal’c after him, but, um, I think that was a joke. Oh, and it’s a week from now, up at the palace – he’s bound to be back by then, right?”

“Bound to,” John said, taking the scroll.

“Right,” the guy said, throwing his hands up cheerfully. “That’s that done, then. Mission accomplished. Thanks for helping out.”

“Don’t mention it,” John said, following the man’s back with his eyes as long as the busy street would allow. Then he took in the rest of the street.

John had been in the capital before and recognized the view – he could see the severe outline of the palace in the distance, the sharp spike of the big clock tower slightly closer.

His brain desperately tried to reconcile the fact that while his nose was definitely breathing in the sundry smells of a large city at the height of summer, his legs were very much still in Antarctica with the rest of the city.

“You can go outside and have a quick look,” the city whispered. “I’ll keep the gate open for you.”

He stepped outside the door, backing away so he could still see the building he had just exited. Far from the high metal arches and wide windows of the city, it seemed to be a squat brick building, withered and blackening with age. There was a name plaque, but it had been haphazardly covered over with a piece of enchanted paper with ‘Dr R McKay’ written on it in blocky handwriting.

So. Magic door. Of course.

People bustled past on the sidewalk without sparing him a second glance, chattering and laughing and swarming in streams around him. The noise of it broke over him in dizzying waves – in the last year he’d almost forgotten that there were actually a lot more people than the population of Skarby in this world, and the blatant, excitable display of it from every direction was making his head spin. The background whirr of zeppelins and flying machines crisscrossing the sky with trailing banners set his skin to a shivery buzz, the cracks as the banners snapped in the wind too loud until they sounded like gunshots and –

_John?_

He jerked in surprise at the city’s voice in his mind, shaking his head to clear it. “Hm?”

_are you okay?_

“Sure,” John said absently, following the banners and flags waving on the breeze with his eyes.

_it’s just that your – nevermind. you should be heading back inside before your disguise starts failing._  

“Yeah, okay,” John said. An elderly man went to push a folded up newspaper into a nearby trash can. John jogged up to him. “Do you mind if I have a look at that, if you’re done with it?” he asked.

The man blinked at him and then shrugged. “Sure, young man. It’s the morning edition, though, just so you know. They’ll have a new one out in a couple of hours.”

John told him that didn’t matter and thank you very much, sir. As the old man strolled away bemusedly, John took one last look around. Directly across the street from the building that was currently standing in for the city was a slightly dingy clothes shop, sign hanging crookedly over the door. It was the kind of place that sold outfits John’s granddad would have nodded approvingly at; solid, bland clothes with no higher aspiration than keeping their wearers reasonably dry and warm. In the window there were piles of neatly folded trousers, shirts, suspenders. John was pretty sure he saw a pair of pants identical to the ones he was wearing, and upon closer inspection, gray underpants discreetly placed to one side. He felt his mouth quirk a little at that, imagining McKay scurrying out the peeling door with an armful of black clothes.

He took the paper with him back inside, unfolding it to have a look at the front page. The main headline read “ **NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE WAR WITH THE GENII – UNCOVERING OF SECRET WEAPON IMMINENT, SAYS SPOKESPERSON FROM THE PALACE** ”, and similar sentiments in various degrees of big type and blunt patriotism were scattered all through the paper. John went up to the control room and put down the scroll while he skimmed through the paper.

There hadn’t been a lot of news coverage at the base. Every once in a while, when the winds were blessed and the magical fields not too unstable and the southern lights not too bright and the relay stations not out of order, the base would manage to receive a crackly radio signal. John had never bothered to listen to it; everything they talked about had been happening far away and often several days ago, nothing to do with him.

By the time John had gotten permanently stationed at the south pole, the war had just reached that awkward stage where everyone knew it was going to hell in a handbasket but no one wanted to be the first to mention it. The only consolation had been that the Genii weren’t faring much better - it was a mutual kind of total disaster.

At least the civilian casualties had been remarkably limited; after both governments had started using sorcerers, most battles were fought in remote locations where natural background magic was plentiful, and powerful wards had been placed on major cities to protect them. The majority of the Genii population had never gotten out of the habit of living underground, either, in great cave systems not unlike termite hills - in a very real sense there was no point in attacking the very tip of the iceberg that was the farming communities on the surface. It was said that the Genii had lived underground from the days of the Great War, when the demons drove them there, but what was certainly true was that you didn’t want to send your men down complex cave networks to catch the people who built them.

The non-magical troops John had been part of were initially there to dissuade the smaller Genii rebel groups from testing the theory that any ridiculously advanced spell painstakingly put in place by people with a lot of education could be broken by people who had no education at all but were willing to go at it with a studied lack of imagination for as long as it took.

And then a few of the sorcerers had started to turn, and all bets were off.

John had never considered himself at war with anyone, in a purely personal sense - he just flew their planes, went where he was told and tried to make sure everyone on his team came back with him. It was what he knew how to do. He’d met men who knew every verse of the national anthem by heart and had tears in their eyes every time the flag was hoisted. To John, who’d always had to mime along quietly from that part in the second verse that went on about the sun rising in glory over the mountains of the motherland or whatever, they were slightly disconcerting. People like that were inevitably up to something.

John looked for a long time at the blurry black and white image of a Genii village in ruins. Then he put it down.

The city was unusually quiet for the next hour or so – which didn’t say very much, since its enamourment of its newfound  verbosity was still fresh enough that it seemed to consider every minute spent in silence a waste – and so John had no other way of distracting himself than to keep working.

“I fell asleep to war, and I woke up to war,” the city said finally. “Sometimes the course of history is depressingly predictable.”

John glanced up. “So you remember that?”

“It’s not as much remembering as a... feeling.” The city sounded distant, lost in some internal process that John couldn’t begin to understand. “Like knowing there’s something really important that you’ve forgotten but you can’t...”

The silence stretched on as John kept working.

“You have a name or something?” John asked finally, elbow deep in withered palms.

“A what?” the city said, alert once again.

“A name. You know, what do I call you? I can’t just keep shouting ‘Oy, you’ in a likely direction every time I’m trying to get your attention.”

The city paused. “You mean it.”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“It’s just that no one has asked me anything like that before.”  

“High time someone did, then.”

“I’m not really a person, you know,” the city said, almost reproachfully. “I’m an artificially created entity within the larger structure of this city meant to store, gather and manage information, and I have certain characteristics that intersect with the human idea of intelligence for ease of interfacing with you – but I’m not actually a _someone_.”

“Sure, sure,” John said, grunting as he pulled at a branch until it snapped out of the pot.

“I just wanted that to be clear.”

“Like crystal.”

There was a long pause and then: “Bi-an-ca. Hippa…for…alkus. Hm. Something with a nice ring to it.”

“How about you think about it for a while,” John said, hauling the pot to the side and starting in on a new one.

\-------

McKay hadn’t come back by lunchtime, and he hadn’t come back when John made himself dinner in the grand old style of Cuisine de Bachelor - his particular brand was to take anything in the kitchen that seemed vaguely edible and hope it went together okay - and sat down to eat it on the edge of the gate room stairs.

“I’m sure he’s alright,” the city said, but too frequently and with too much urgency to be very convincing. “He goes out quite a lot, and he’s been away for much longer than this before.”

“Right,” John said, chewing on his toast even though he still wasn’t very hungry. The city had gotten very definite on the subject of dropping another meal, though - it was like having your grandmother hovering over you, if your grandmother had consistently referred to food as fuel.

“He usually says if he’s planning to be gone more than one night, but, you know, all sorts of things could have happened. Something could have come up. Maybe he met someone.”

“He meets up with people often, then?”

“Not what you’d call socially. I don’t think he actually has any friends.”

“But maybe.”

“Uh-huh.”

John tore his toast into smaller and smaller pieces. To be honest he wasn’t exactly sure what time it was – it was always dark outside the windows and he hadn’t found anything he recognized as a timekeeping device – but his internal clock was very definite in its judgment that McKay had been gone too long. He didn’t really want to find out how he’d deal with being stranded in a flying city without the one person who seemed to have the faintest notion of what was going on.

For lack of anything better he went back to the plants again, listening with half an ear to the city’s musings.

“How about... Crysanthemonia? Cornelius. Vaselina. Hm... Earl? Genghis. What do you think, John? It’d have to be something with a bit of gravitas, but also a certain grace, you know?”

“Well...” John said slowly.

The doorway lit up blue, making that curious ‘whoosh’ sound again. John glanced over at the city’s face in the glass painting. “Is that supposed to…?”

The city’s eyes widened like two smears of ash on the glass. “It’s Rodney.”

There were some clicking sounds from the door, like a key turning in a lock, and it creaked slightly open, McKay edging in through the gap before pushing it shut with his shoulder. He stood there leaned against the door for a while, staring at John – and, presumably, John’s little pot salvaging project – with perfect blankness.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked. McKay looked like shit, dark rings under his eyes and grime covering half of his face in patches where he’d tried to rub it off with his equally grimy sleeve.

“Spring cleaning,” John ventured, gesturing meekly to the emptied flowerpots. McKay just kept looking at him, blinking slowly as if hoping this would change what he was seeing.

“Ah. Right. Of course.” He stared for a little while longer and then pushed himself away from the door with his shoulder, wincing a little.

“Are you alright?” the city asked, peeking out from the glass painting with big dark eyes. McKay waved his hand dismissively, grimacing as it jolted his shoulder.

“I’m still alive with all my limbs attached, so under the circumstances I’ll count it as a victory. I got this,” he added holding up what looked like a small carved crystal.

“Shiny,” John said.

“That, too,” McKay sighed, stumbling up the stairs to collapse in one of the control room chairs. It was a collapse in several impressive stages, with a finely balanced amount of plunk and a suitably exhausted ‘oomph’ as he folded his arms in front of him and sunk down on a work station. Almost like an afterthought he tossed the crystal to the side so that it landed on a clear glass plate embedded in the work station desk top. A low glow started coming from it, shining through the clear crystal.  

“It’s going to take some time to go through all of this,” the city declared. “Did you go out there? Is it as bad as they seemed to think?”

“Well, on that front I’ve got bad news,” McKay said, “and then I’ve got terrible news. Which one do you want first?”

“Let’s take it in ascending degree of fatalism, shall we?” the city said, sounding distracted. The various screens in the control room started to flicker with shifting images, mostly out-of-focus pictures of the dark hillsides of the Waste.“Hm. Are you sure these files haven’t been corrupted or something? It seems very unlikely that the growth has escalated this quickly.”

“That would be the bad news. The _terrible_ news is that it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. I hacked the - I took a look at the SGC reports, and it’s been an almost exponential rate of expansion this last year.”

“This _can’t_ be possible,” the city said. “I mean, it just... there’s no way they could have established that many... ”

“Don’t shoot the man who shot the messenger and stole his mail bag,” McKay muttered into his folded arms. “There’s no point arguing with plain facts.”

“It’s never stopped you before,” the city said.

McKay waved a hand gloomily. “I should probably go back there and do a more thorough sweep - there wasn’t really any way to cover all of it, as you might have deduced.”

“We’re talking about several hundred square miles of the Waste here, Rodney. How do you imagine you’ll manage to cover all of it without being caught?”

McKay rubbed at his eyes. “I’ll... figure something out. I’m sure there’s... something.”

“There might be something else, too,” John said, finding the scroll with the red seal and putting in front of McKay. “Someone called Doctor Lee delivered this earlier today. Seems like you’re invited to this party twice over. Did you double book or something? Forget to check Mer’s calendar before you signed up Doctor McKay?”

McKay looked from John to the scroll and back again. “I,” he said. “It’s... what.”

In that moment he so perfectly encapsulated the essence of a puppy repeatedly kicked by the great boot of the universe that John was moved to pat him awkwardly on the shoulder.

“How about you take a nap before you try to deal with that, huh?”

“A nap,” McKay repeated dully. “Yes, yes, that sounds... Nap. Bed. _Right_.”

He stood up and John gently turned him the right direction before he stumbled off.

“And that’s the guy you’ve handed over the controls of the city to?” John said, as McKay very nearly walked into a wall because he missed the doorway and then swore heartily.

“I’m afraid so,” the city said.

“Then both of us might try finding religion, because we’re gonna need all the help we can get.”

“I don’t know if there’s a god of machines,” the city said sadly. “If there was, there’d probably be a lot less messy programming in this world.”


	5. In which John is slightly less confused and McKay is depressed

 

John didn’t know what time it was when he was woken up by McKay barrelling into the gate room.

“I know what we have to do!” McKay yelled excitedly.

“Wha – ” John said, sitting up so the blankets fell away into his lap. McKay was standing in front of him in just his boxers and a ratty old T-shirt, solid thighs almost blindingly pale in the dark. He wore a grin so intensely cheerful that it bordered on madness. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I. Have. A. Plan!” McKay said.

“Okay,” John said, blinking furiously. “That’s… grand. What kind of plan?”

In the span of milliseconds McKay changed gears from elation to condescension. “Oh, just laying some final touches to my great scheme to eliminate all citrus fruit from the world. Dotting some Is, crossing some Ts, you know how it is.” When John just kept blinking at him, McKay gestured impatiently. “Seriously, does _anyone_ ever pay attention around here? I know how we could survey all that land without getting caught!”

“What? What?” the city suddenly broke in, the lights turning up a bit. “What are you talking about? I was off trying to find something in the database, I didn’t get any of that.”

McKay gave John a look that clearly said: “See? Even the people around here especially engineered to be intelligent are imbeciles”.

“McKay thinks he has a solution to your data-gathering problem,” John said.

“What, already? It usually takes him at least half a week of sulking before he manages –“

“Slander notwithstanding,” McKay said loudly, “I think I’ve found a way. You see, if we – you know what, I think it’ll be easier to explain if I can show you. But, ah, I should probably put on some pants first,” McKay said, looking down at his bare knees as if surprised to see them there.

“You do that,” John said, swinging his legs out over the edge of the bed and scratching his neck as McKay hurried away.

 

\-------

 

When McKay reappeared, nether regions now decently apparelled, he bounced on the pads of his toes until John got up and followed him to the closest transporter.

“I never considered it before because, well, there wasn’t really any way to... but anyway, I’m pretty sure they’re keyed to interface with the gene, so we’re probably going to get something, at least.”

“Mhm,” John agreed, as their bare feet slapped against the metal floor.

“This way, I think - yes, definitely this way...” McKay veered down the corridor and came to a halt in front of a broad set of doors. He went on to push in a couple of symbols on a small pad by the door panel.

“How’d you crack the code?” John asked. Those didn’t look like numbers to him.

“I didn’t,” McKay said as the door slid open. “I put it in place myself.”

John folded his arms and tipped his head to the side. “Haven’t you been by yourself all this time?”

“I believe in being prepared,” McKay said, moving forward. “Come on, it’s through here.”

They stepped in, and John immediately knew they were in a big room through acoustics more than sight - everything was shrouded in a dusty darkness, but he could still hear the echo of McKay’s voice ringing down from the ceiling.

“What kind of place is this?” John asked, as his eyes got accustomed to the darkness.

“You’ll see,” McKay said, and just then John saw the outline of the first ship.

It was not very large and sort roughly semicircular, with carvings along the dull grey-green metal of the hull. John took a couple of steps forward, and lights started to come to life all around him.

“Oh wow,” McKay said faintly. “That’s…”

“Cool,” John agreed, reaching out a tentative hand and touching the closest ship’s hull. At his touch the back end of the ship opened up like a hatch, exposing the interior.

“It’s never done that before,” McKay said, brushing past John to get a look. The back end of the ship had low benches along the walls, while the front end had four chairs and a strange set of panels under the windshield.

McKay promptly dropped into one of the chairs, so John followed his example and studied the panels. They looked at once both completely alien and... familiar.

“So what are they, exactly?”

“They’re flying machines,” McKay said, gesturing wildly. “Since I can’t get into the database I don’t know what the Ancients called them, but I’ve named them gate ships.”

John made a face. “’Gate ship’? Little slip of a thing like this?”

“Well – it’s obviously a ship, it’s goes through the gate…”

Ten minutes later John was sitting behind the controls of the _puddlejumper_ – McKay was still scowling a little in the passenger seat – trying to figure out the mechanics without accidentally firing its weapons or anything like that. It was strange, though: he’d never seen controls like these before in his life, but they made perfect sense, as if they had been designed with exactly his hands in mind. Between that and the screen that overlaid the windshield and seemed to pretty much read his thoughts, it was almost insultingly easy. With what felt more like a flick of his mind than anything he got it to lift half a meter or so over the ground, hovering there steadily.

“You think you can fly it?” McKay asked, holding on to the edge of his seat in a not-very-discreet way.

John felt his mouth curl up. “I have yet to come across something I couldn’t.”

“Brazen overconfidence, that’s reassuring,” said McKay, resident patron saint of hypocrisy.

“No, really, it’s… easy. Almost as if it’s telling me what to do.”

McKay stuck his lower lip out thoughtfully. “It probably _is_ – that’s the thing about the gene, it’s what the technology is specifically designed to interface with. It must initialize a neural connection or something.”

“So my genes are highly advanced,” John said, fishing.

McKay glowered. “It’s a random characteristic; level of advancement has nothing to do with it. For all I know it could turn up in gorillas.” At John’s look, he said: “Well, do I _look_ like someone who’s willing to spend years slaving over a petri dish just so I can call myself a geneticist? Really, though, do you think you can fly it?”

John considered it, giving the controls the tiniest tug just to feel the jumper move minutely. “How do we get it out of here?”

“Well...”

“Like this,” the city said, and there was a great big scraping noise from overhead. They craned their necks to see out the jumper windscreen. The roof was pulling back, revealing the sharp pinpricks of the stars in the night sky.

“I had no idea it could do that,” McKay said dreamily.

“I never really had a cause to bring it up before.”

“Okay, then,” John said, taking one last look at the controls. “Here goes.”

“Hey, hey, hey, maybe I should, uh, stay down here and monitor - ”  

“You’re the one who knows how this tech works, right?” John said.

“Well – yes?”

“And this thing hasn’t been in use for, oh, let’s say over ten thousand years?”

“…approximately. Thereabout.”

“Then I’m suggesting that I’d want you on board in case anything goes ‘beep’ and I don’t know whether it’s because it needs oil or the engine is about to fail.” When McKay still didn’t look convinced, he added: “We won’t go too fast and I can keep us low to the ground, how about that.”

McKay sighed deeply. “Since I see that my expertise might prove invaluable…”

“Exactly,” John said. “Is everything clear up there?”

“Should be, yes,” the city said.

“Here we go, then,” John said, taking the ship up and up and up.   

 

\-------

 

McKay still clung to the edges of his seat as the jumper soared clear of the city and out over the snow. The moon was out, hovering low on the horizon, and the silvery light gave the snow a pale, otherworldly glow. John whistled under his breath as he let the jumper gently sweep downwards.

“You’ve got to have a look at this,” John said, glancing over at McKay, who was drilling finger shaped grooves into the armrests.

“I’m taking it all in just fine like this, thank you.”

“McKay, you’ve got your eyes shut.”

“As you may remember, I might not be one hundred percent comfortable with heights. Or depths. It’s the depth that kills you, really.”

“Hey, I promise, it’s fine. We’re not going to suddenly fall down or anything. This is the steadiest damn thing I’ve ever steered.”

McKay made a pained sound, but after a second he teased one eye open, and then the other. He blinked at the moonlit landscape. “Yes, well, I suppose it’s kind of… pretty, when you look at it like this. Cold and dark and horrible,” he added hastily, “but pretty. It’s almost like home.”

“If home was a meat freezer, sure.”

“Hah. Well, not that far off; I’m from up north. I used to have to walk to school in this kind of weather.” He glanced down at his ever-present black tablet. “Hm. I’m picking up some kind of strong magical field nearby, what do the ship sensors say?”

“Hang on,” John said, concentrating on the bare concept of bringing the sensors online since he had absolutely no idea how it worked with any technical detail. The screen dutifully overlaid the view with a network of colored lines, seemingly random but for a cluster in the lower right corner.

“Oh, okay,” McKay said, trailing a finger over the lines, “so these scattered ones are probably just the usual background magic, but there’s obviously something out of the ordinary down there to the right  - do you see anything?”

John stared intently at the ground and noticed a small, thin figure in the snow, steadfastly trailing in the wake of the city. “Hey,” he said, swerving a bit closer to be sure of what he was seeing, “that’s my buddy from before - he helped me find the city.”

“He helped you and you left him out there?” McKay demanded.

“He didn’t seem to mind,” John said defensively. “He didn’t say anything, anyway. Well. He’s a scarecrow, so he probably _couldn’t_ say anything even if he wanted to, but...”

McKay squinted at him. “Right. A scarecrow.” He fumbled around in his pocket - the searingly orange coat had made a reappearance - and pulled out a tired-looking pair of binoculars. He raised them to his eyes and directed them down towards the scarecrow, which had stopped and was turning its turnip face up towards them stoically. After a while he said: “Oh. Okay, yeah, a scarecrow. That’s one hell of a spell he’s got on him there. Someone really went out of their way to make that poor bastard’s life miserable.”

“You don’t suppose you could...”

“What, break the spell? Hm. Well, not right now, but... I might look it up if I get a spare minute. It looks pretty interesting. Pretty old, too; I don’t think I’ve seen that kind of incantations on anything outside of a museum. Might be useful to find out if you can increase the longevity of a spell without...” He trailed off into absorbed silence.   

“So later, then.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” McKay said, putting away his binoculars and biting his lip.

When McKay had assured himself that at least all the ship’s systems he could understand were fully functioning - which took at least an hour, and John didn’t even mind because there was something very serene about flying the jumper in sweet shallow loops while the inertial dampeners took off for the G-forces - John flew them back to the jumper bay and landed on a clear spot of floor. Once they’d touched down and the engines shut off, he sat back in his seat.

“Well, that was new,” he said after a while.

“Mhm. Can I... can I ask you for something?” McKay said, oddly formal.

“Shoot.”

McKay fiddled with the edge of his sleeve. “I mean, would you mind... I can’t fly these things, so if you’d be willing to come with me - we’re not going to make contact or anything, I wouldn’t put you in any undue danger - ”

“You asking me to be your chauffeur for the evening?” John said, trying to ignore the disconcerting implications of ‘undue’ danger.

McKay moved his mouth around a bit. “I - it - yes?”

“All right,” John said.

“Really? You’re sure?”

“Yeah. One condition, though,” John said. “If I do this, you’ll tell me what’s going on here.”

There was a long pause. “Fair enough,” McKay said finally, staring out the windscreen. “After we do this, I’ll... try to explain.”  

“Right,” John said, slightly suspicious at how easily that deal had gotten through. “When do we leave?”

“As soon as possible. Let me just - I’ll go get some things we might need. Is there anything you...?”

John glanced down at his bare feet. “A pair of boots?”

“Wait, I didn’t get you boots? Oh. Um, sorry about that. I’ll see if I can get you a pair. Just stay right here until I get back, okay?”

When McKay had gone, John sat restlessly in the chair, trying to suppress that inner voice telling him this might not be the smartest thing he’d ever ventured into.

The city spoke up after a while. “John, are you sure this is such a good - ”

“Do you have a better idea?” John asked. “From what McKay is saying this is pretty important to... whatever it is you do here.”

“That doesn’t mean you should - ”

John tuned out whatever the city was saying - probably that same old spiel about self-destructive tendencies, jumping headfirst into harm’s way, you think the odds never apply to you. Whatever it was he’d heard it before. He fiddled with some of the jumper’s controls, sometimes noticing a thrill in his fingers telling him how the buttons and levers wanted to be used. His hand hovered for a long time over a big square panel before it gently touched down.

“ - and you might think you can keep being so cavalier about your continued existence, but right now you’re not the only one who’s... _John Sheppard, what did you just do?_ ”

“Nothing,” John said, quickly pushing the button again.

“You just dropped off my sensors again. Hm. Interesting.” There was a pause. “Do that again.”

McKay came back to a seemingly empty space where the jumper had been.

“Wait, what – where’d he go?” he said, looking around wildly. John pressed the button again, and McKay jumped back, eyes wide.

“It’s got extra features, too,” John called, smirking at McKay through the windshield. McKay scrambled around to the hatch and sat down beside him.

“O- _kay_ ,” he said. “So it goes invisible. This just went from ‘desperate million to one chance’ to... still pretty close to a desperate million to one chance but slightly less so. Here are the boots - I don’t think they’ve got any holes anywhere, but my cat threw up in them once, so they might smell a little.”

At least McKay knew how to boost a man’s morale before a mission.

The city opened a big hatch in the floor to let them get down to the gate room, and McKay immediately embraced his inner backseat driver.

“Okay, so lower us… lower us… _don’t hit the side there_!”

“Well, then don’t startle me like that,” John said as the jumper slowly descended into the gate room, stopping to hover at the height of the gate.

“As you’ve pointed out yourself these things haven’t been in use for god knows how long, pardon me for wanting to show some caution. Okay, so do we have the address ready to dial?”

The city sniffed. “ _I_ have been ready for half an hour now. Just give the word.”

McKay glanced over at John. “You ready to cloak it?”

John reached out and pressed the button again, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

“Let’s go, then,” McKay said, and the gate started lighting up.

 

\-------

 

The Waste was exactly what it sounded like: miles and miles of nothing but mountain ridges like the broken spine of the earth twisting up through scraggly grass and heather that bent pitifully under the constant whipping wind.

Traditionally it was thought that the Waste had been the battlefield of the Great War, since it was so lousy with background magic that only sorcerers felt comfortable staying there. Even they tended to keep around the edges - and why not; there wasn’t anything to find in the heart of the Waste except death or madness. There was nothing there, that was the whole point; it was as if the gods themselves had forgotten a spot while creating the world and the magic had found itself at home in the emptiness, filling it from the inside out.

The jumper soared out over the sallow grass and the gate shut behind them. John let them gain a little height before making the jumper hover quietly there.

“Here we are,” he said, looking over at McKay. “How do you want to do this?”

McKay fiddled a bit with his tablet and then held it up. “It’d be best if we flew in a grid like this,” he said, pointing to the coordinates on the screen. “And try to stay as low as you can without putting us at risk. It might be invisible right now, but it’s been gathering rust for ten thousand years, so it’s better to err on the side of caution.”

“Got it,” John said. “Hey, let me try something.” He stared at the windscreen for a second and concentrated. With a cheery little beep the screen engaged and showed them the grid McKay had planned, helpfully indicating the route.

“Huh,” McKay said approvingly.

John turned the jumper in the right direction and started in on the grid.

“So,”  he said after a while. “What’s the deal with these gate... things?”

McKay squinted at him. “Didn’t we agree that I would explain things later? As in, when you won’t disturb me while I take measurements?”  

John shrugged. “Call it an advance.”

McKay sighed deeply. “Oh well, I guess I can multitask. Well, I honestly don’t know what the ‘deal’ with them is, no one does. We’re pretty sure they were left here by the Ancients - same people who built the city. Sometimes the doors just lead to other places on this world, and sometimes they lead.... elsewhere. No one has a very good grasp of how it works, but of everyone who knows about them I have the - let’s say, least worst handle on it. There used to be this guy - Daniel Jackson, he was an _archeologist_ ,” McKay pronounced the word much like you would ‘plague carrier, “and he could at least translate a good chunk of the writings the Ancients left behind about the gates, even if he didn’t understand them. He died, though, a year ago or so.”

“Right,” John said, trying to figure out the archaeologist's place in things.

“Anyway, that’s not the important - see, I was working on theories on the mechanics of the gates way before I actually knew they were real. It’s not as though it was a miracle or anything, the math’s been pointing that way for ages, if you know how to look at it. Not that it stopped more ignorant people from mercilessly making fun of the notion, of course.”

“There’s always someone.”

“The Ancients called them ‘Stargates’. Which, you know, makes you wonder just how far the network extends.”

John considered it, thinking about the door opening to a busy street. “So you could go anywhere you wanted to with these things.”

“If you know what you’re doing,” McKay agreed. “Otherwise you’re far more likely to send different bits and pieces of yourself to places they really wouldn’t want to go. Separately.”

“Ah.”

“Now, if you don’t mind... I’m trying to do research that could save the world here.”

“Right,” John said, sitting back in his chair. Then he kept quiet and flew in a straight line for ten minutes... twenty... half an hour...

“Just asking here,” he said finally, “but how long is this going to take?”

“I don’t know exactly. A long time,” said McKay, who was hunched over his tablet and another strange device on the floor that he’d hooked it up to. “We’ve got ten thousand square miles to cover. Hopefully we’ll be done before it gets dark.”

“Oh.” As is always the case in these situations, John’s bladder suddenly made its existence known. He flew on. After a stretch of time in which kingdoms might easily have risen and fallen and risen again, the jumper told him to take a ninety degree turn to the right. “Well, this is... exciting.”

“Hm, isn’t it? I doubt anyone has ever gotten such consistent readings over such a large area of the Waste before, we could learn all sorts of things.”

Science seemed to be the one thing in the world McKay’s soul didn’t have a piece of sarcasm for, so John didn’t say anything.

By the next ninety degree turn, McKay’s head shot up and he gave a small cry. “Oh shit!”

“What? What is it?” John said, looking around wildly for enemy presence or, seeing as this was the Waste, giant fucking birds swooping out of the sky. Dragons, for all John knew.

“I just remembered I brought breakfast! I can’t believe I forgot about that,” McKay said, rooting around in the bag he’d brought.

“Right,” John said weakly, adrenaline hammering at his temples.

McKay sat up, triumphantly holding up two handfuls of power bars. “Vanilla, blueberry or chocolate?”

“Not hungry.”

“Okay, keep this one for later, then,” McKay said, tossing a vanilla bar into John’s lap. He opened the wrapper of a chocolate one and bit into it enthusiastically. “It’s your blood sugar we’re flying on. You know what, this isn’t looking half as bad as I was afraid - oh.”

The device the tablet was hooked up to started blinking urgently all of a sudden. McKay pressed a lot of buttons very quickly, then stopped, face pale as ice. “ _Oh_.”

John didn’t like the suddenly deflated hunch of McKay’s shoulders. “‘Oh’ what?”

“Sheppard... look down.”

John glanced down - he hadn’t been giving the landscape much attention, since it mostly went rock-heather-heather-rock-grass anyway. “What for?”

And then John noticed the distant hillsides moving. There was no other word for it - it looked like the mountains were tearing themselves away from the ground very slowly, huge chunks of turf falling away. He opened and closed his eyes a couple of times, but the picture stubbornly stayed exactly the same.

“What…” he said, looking over at McKay just to make sure he wasn’t going crazy.

“You’re not imagining it,” McKay said. “Tell me, Sheppard, how big do you figure the Waste is?”

“Pretty big.”

“Uh-huh. Very scientific, very precise, thank you. Well, how difficult do you figure it would be to hide here? Even quite large things, especially if no one _knows_ that you’re still hiding... Could you land us over there?” He pointed at nearby hilltop, the tallest one for miles.

“It’s not going to start moving, is it?”

“No, it’s not giving off an energy signature, it should be just plain old rock. We need to get a closer look.”

While John landed the jumper, McKay took out the binoculars again. They were close enough to the moving hillsides that they would be possible to spot if they weren’t cloaked. A few seconds after McKay raised the binoculars to his eyes he started swearing under his breath. John tried to lean so he could follow McKay’s line of sight.

From here he could only see an indistinct mass moving between the mysteriously writhing hills. The jumper was far enough away and elevated enough that it looked like the frenzied activity around an ant hill, lots of small figures joining up to a chaotic whole.

“What is it?” he asked. McKay turned to him with the binoculars still up, giving him a disconcerting bug-eyed look. He mutely handed them over to John, who put them to his eyes with some trepidation. Through the binoculars he could finally distinguish the separate elements that made up the crowd. They were humanoid shapes, milling around each other ceaselessly, a flurry of focused movement.

With some difficulty he started making out individual shapes, which seemed... familiar, with their long black coats and white hair, and finally one turned around and he saw the pale, bony face with the dark swirling tattoos _..._

John lowered the binoculars all at once, and even though he had a bad suspicion that he knew the answer all too well, he asked: “McKay - what the hell is going on?”

“It’s the demons,” McKay said lethargically. “They’re all waking up. Those things down there are their ships coming back online.”

John stared down at the moving hills, at the smaller figures milling around them.“Those are all demons.”

McKay made a face. “As far as I understand there were a lot of different kinds of demons back in the day, but this specific, uh, strain used to be called ‘wraith’.”

“I don’t care what they’re called,” John said slowly, “I’m more concerned with how they’re swarming around down there like a termite hill.”

“At least you’ve got perspective. Listen - the one you ran into? Our mutual friend? He must’ve been one of the first to wake up, because I’ve had my eye on him for over a year now. We’ve known for a long time that some of them were coming back, we just... had no idea that there were so many of them.”

“Who are ‘we’?”

“That’s classified,” McKay said matter-of-factly.

John waited for his body to give some kind of clue as to what he should be feeling right now, but he just felt empty and kind of dizzy, just like he had for the last few days. “I thought the demons were all myths, or at least fought off a long time ago.”

“This explains how we won the war, I guess. The enemy decided to take a break to have a nap.” McKay was sitting in a private pool of dark depression.  

John raised the binoculars again, trying to take it all in, a small part of him back in the room with the chair and the dark figure hunched over him, palm pressing against his chest, hissing voice tearing through his mind... and then he tried to imagine an army of creatures like that.

“Should we turn back?” John said after a while.

McKay shrugged. “They haven’t detected us this far, so we might just as well finish the grid and get a proper picture of just how screwed we are, right?”

That was the last thing he said for several hours, and John flew the jumper and kept quiet, too.

 

\-------

 

When they were back in the gateroom McKay still hadn’t said a thing. Even with the device he’d had hooked up to his tablet under one arm he loped up the stairs at such a pace that John had to run to keep up.

“Welcome back,” the city said, eyes appearing on the main screen. “Are you guys okay?”

McKay slammed the device he’d been using down on a workbench, opened a hatch in the side of it and pulled out a tray of the same kind of crystals he’d used before.

“How’d it go?” the city asked.

“Have a look for yourself,” McKay said sourly and threw the crystals onto the glass plate on the console. “I’m going to bed now.”

“Oh - okay?”

“I haven’t slept for more than three hours straight  in half a week and I figure I might as well get some rest while we all await our grisly demise. Night.”

Both the city and John watched McKay’s back as he went down the stairs and away.

“That’s about how well it went,” John said helpfully when he was out of sight.

“I can see that,” the city said slowly, as it read the crystals. “Wow. For once his pessimism might not be entirely unwarranted.”

“The hills were moving about,” John said. It sounded just as dumb out loud as it had inside his head.

“It is kind of unsettling the first time you see it, isn’t it,” the city said. “So you’re feeling okay, then?”

“Yeah, sure. Why?”

“Because then I’ll have no qualms about sending you off to do human things while I concentrate on this,” the city said cheerfully. “Come on, go repair your cells or whatever it is you people do when you’re not working.”

“I need to have a talk with McKay about your education,” John said, but he left the city to work in peace anyway.

John went over to his bed and toed off the boots - they did smell a little- and sat down at the edge of the bed. He looked around for a while, hands resting in his lap.

 _An army of vengeful demons is waking up and marching towards humankind any day now_ , he told himself. He pressed his fingertips together, waiting to see if he was going to freak out about it. After five minutes he had to assume that the answer was no, he wasn’t, so he laid back on the bed and folded his hands over his stomach.

He listened to the hum of the city for a while - he had no idea how long - everything pale and silent and far away.

When it had gone on for so long that the silence was pressing against the inside of his eyeballs, too big for his skull to contain, John went up to the control room and skimmed through the different books lying on the consoles - mostly giant tomes on magic, which he didn’t understand, or on physics, which he also didn’t understand but in a slightly more qualified way. Some of the symbols looked familiar, anyway.

“It’s been five hours,” the city said finally. “Maybe you should check in on him. He won’t talk to me, I just tried.”

“Yeah, okay,” John said, gratefully pushing the books to the side and sliding off the chair.

“And you should bring him some coffee,” the city said. “That’s going to significantly lower the odds that he’ll throw something at you. In fact, let me put some on right now and - ”

“Why don’t you let me do that while you go back to figuring out the results,” John said quickly. If he kept letting the city brew the stuff, they’d have a caffeine-induced heart attack on their hands any day now. After navigating McKay’s fiendishly complicated coffee maker, John filled two mugs and let the city guide him to McKay’s room. He knocked on the door.

“Hey, is it okay if I come in there?” he called. No answer.

“I’m pretty sure he’s awake,” the city said. “He just turned on some lights in there.”

John shrugged and waved at the door panel. True enough, there were a couple of lights on, sufficient for John not to bang his shin into the furniture on his way over to the bed. McKay was only a lumpy shape under the blankets, a tuft of hair sticking out at the top. As far as possible for a blanket cocoon, he was giving off an air of stubborn defeatism.  

“Hey,” John said. “I made some coffee.” He tried to wave the coffee fumes in the general direction of the bed.

 _if he’s not even responding to that, it’s_ bad _. maybe you should check his pulse. he might be brain dead._

John rolled his eyes and put the steaming mugs on the nightstand. When this still didn’t provoke a reaction he sat down and looked around the room. McKay had obviously been staying here for a while -  there were clothes strewn about, books stacked in neat piles, heaps of paper on most flat surfaces. Things that had to be half-finished spells were littered all over - either that, or McKay made very strange and macabre cat’s cradles as a hobby.

One whole wall was taken up with impressive diplomas and other self-congratulatory documents, though to be fair there were enough of them that a little bit of self-congratulation was probably in order. There was also a small lineup of photographs of cats, which was at once hilarious and slightly sad - they took the place where most people would have pictures of friends and family.   

“Nice place you’ve got here,” John said. McKay huffed but didn’t otherwise deign to move. John folded his arms over his chest, trying to figure out where to go from here. “Very... homely.”

There was another long silence.

“I was promised some straight answers,” John said finally, and the blankets heaved with a deep sigh.

“Yeah, see, there aren’t a lot of those around here these days,” McKay muttered.

“How about you start with explaining that double identity thing you’ve got going on?”

There was another sigh from beneath the covers and McKay extricated a hand to gesticulate as he spoke.

“Listen, when I was a kid, I always wanted to be a wizard. Okay, I _actually_ wanted to be a pianist? But my mom wanted me to follow in her footsteps and be a sorcerer and I thought it was fine, you know, being able to make things burst into flames, turning the more condescending of your teachers into toads, the sort of things an eight year old thinks is great stuff. So I got really good at it. Only took me half a year or so to catch up to the level of my first teacher and there was all the usual talk, ‘natural talent, quick study, prodigy’, yadda yadda.” For once McKay didn’t sound smug or bragging, just slightly bitter. “Except I had to be an apprentice on paper because you can’t be a licensed wizard before you’re of age, right? And by the time I was seventeen, my mother - I’d lost interest, so with one thing and another I never took a final test. I haven’t got a license. I’m not in any records anymore. For the longest time I just used what I knew about magic to try and figure out how the hell it can intersect with mundane science. And then...”

There was a pause, and then McKay rose stiffly from the heap of blankets, like a mummy on a low budget and with a pillow crease on one cheek. He scrubbed at his face.

“Long story short, some people came to me one day and asked about my theories on how the stargates work, they were having problems with one of theirs. It... didn’t work out as well as it could have.”  

“What ‘people’ would these be?”

“Well, there’s a secret branch of the government... you know, I’m not sure I should be telling you this.”

“Look at it like this: out here, who am I going to tell?.”

“Yes, well. Okay. There’s a small branch of the government especially devoted to the study and use of the gates; Stargate Command. They were the ones who first realized the wraith were waking up because they use parts of the gate system to monitor energy readings and fluctuations in magical fields around the world and noticed weird spikes from the gates on the outskirts of the Waste. At first no one really paid it any attention because the Waste is already so intensely magical that it’s a wonder we don’t get more wild rabbits going through life backwards or flying shrews or things like that. But then it became consistent enough that they sent out a team to investigate. They found one hive waking up and took care of it - I imagine a lot of explosives were involved - and thought the problem was solved. They’ve got a lot to worry about on a daily basis, I suppose it’s understandable that they put it on the backburner when there was no immediate indication that it wasn’t an isolated incident.”

“So you’re working for those guys?”

McKay winced. “Uh. Not exactly. Remember I said my work for the SGC didn’t work out as well as it could? That may have been a bit of an... understatement.”

“What happened?”

“Well, we, hm. Almost destroyed the world?” He made a face. “Again.”

John just looked at him.

“For the record, I served as the voice of reason in that situation,” McKay added defensively. “Samantha Carter just doesn’t know when to admit defeat and back down. Okay, so maybe the fact that her team mate was trapped in there makes it slightly more understandable, but... Anyway, we _didn’t_ end updestroying the world.“

“Well. Good.”

“And General Hammond wasn’t very happy with me after that, uh, little incident - which, by the way, was grossly unfair; I know you get unpopular really fast by being the voice of cold logic, but they are running that program on nothing but blind hope, Sam Carter’s wits and some elbow grease, I think I can safely say that they need to be faced with the insane risks they are taking with the lives of everyone on this - anyway, that’s not the important part,” McKay said hastily, at the look on John’s face. “The point is that he sent me far, far away to work on one of the gates in the northern regions of the Waste, up where there’s nothing but permafrost and potato soup and cabbage stew and other disgusting food staples. They’d excavated some ruins there; most of the computers were pretty banged up, and what little we could make out from them didn’t make any sense. It read more like a historical or religious text, which was strange considering the rest of the ruins were undisputably a science lab. Among the personal notes of one of the scientists I even found something that looked like sheet music, which was a first - we know vanishingly little about the Ancients as a culture. In fact this is the one place of theirs we know anything about - ‘The Lost City’, though from the way they talked about it you’d be forgiven for thinking they meant lost as in ‘destroyed forever’.”

John raised his eyebrows to make him go on. McKay rubbed at his temple wearily.

“There was something about the sheet music in the scientist’s notes that bothered me, and it’s not as though there’s anything to spend your spare time on up there anyway, so I made it into a pet project. To me, music always had a perfect order, you know? It made sense to me, when I was a kid. So maybe that’s why I stuck with it. As it turned out, they weren’t melodies at all. When correctly decoded they all turned out to be gate addresses -  brand new, never-seen-before addresses. And so with one thing and another I managed to find out which address lead to the city. Actually it was a lot more complicated than that and it was still on the bottom of the ocean at that point and the ZPM was almost depleted and then - the _whales_ and the shield collapsing and - okay, that’s not important right now. I found the city.”

John wrinkled his forehead. “On the bottom of the ocean?”

“It’s a long, long story, just... go with it for the time being. Pretty quickly I started noticing the problem of the wraith - our ‘mutual friend’,” McKay added with some bitterness. “I don’t know, he seems to be different than the others - he’s alone, for one thing. Normally they travel in groups, but I’ve only ever seen him by himself. He’s got to have some sort of technology or magic that can tell him the city’s awake, even if it can’t pinpoint its location. I’ve had a couple of close brushes with him, but he’s never managed to follow me for long enough to discover the city. My magic’s a little rusty,” he added modestly, “but it’s still about fifty times more effective than most other sorcerers can manage.”

“So there’s no chance of him showing up on our doorstep any day soon,” John said.

McKay narrowed his eyes shiftily. “I... wouldn’t say _no_ chance, but yes, it’s fairly unlikely. I’ve used the gates to lead him on a wild goose chase all over the world up to now, and he doesn’t know we can’t move beyond a crawl. As far as he’s concerned, we could be anywhere. But I always knew there could only be a question of time before he figured it out, and once he understands just how vulnerable we really are out here... So this - guy, demon, wraith, whatever, I knew that he was trying to track me down. I had no shields, the city would suddenly flicker out and be silent for whole days before it came back online again, it would only move at a snail’s pace, and what little power I had was running out swiftly. A new power source would eliminate at least half of my problems, but that’s not as easy as it sounds because - see, this place needs a very specific sort of power source to work properly. I call them ZPMs. Zero Point Modules? It’s pretty clever, actually; they draw power from a contained pocket of subspace, which - “

“Let’s assume that my interest in how they work is very much second to why they’re so important,” John interrupted, encouraged by the way McKay had started gesticulating eagerly during the explanation.

McKay rolled his eyes. “Right, right. So, as you can imagine, the Ancients didn’t leave them littered all over. Or rather, they did,” he added thoughtfully, “in a way that has me slightly worried about both their level of common sense _and_ concern for eventual descendants - but very few of them have enough juice left to be useful. The one place where I _knew_ there was a fully charged ZPM was the research station down here. So I thought... actually I’m not quite sure what I thought, I hadn’t slept in a while. I guess I just planned to, uh, sneak in there and... steal away with it. Which, okay, I admit it was not a perfect plan, but I thought the city was dying on me and...”

He folded his hands tightly in his lap, mouth pressed into a thin line.

“And you had to take the chance,” John said.

“ _Yes_. Except then I got there and guess what - the place looks like it’s been the scene of an amazingly destructive home alone party. If teenagers had Ancient drones at their disposal in addition to a sulkily inflated sense of self-entitlement and whatever horrible moonshine someone has been able to brew up in their grandfather’s basement. Lights are not even on, no one’s home, and that includes the ZPM.”

John scratched his temple. “So that’s why you were in Skarby that day?”

“Trying to find out what had happened on the research station, yes. I’d been better off asking a bunch of monkeys to explain the laws of thermodynamics, though; I don’t think half of them even knew about the place and the other half thought it was for doing genetic experimentation to create killer penguins or something. And then that bartender guy in Skarby told me that people _had_ seen the city on its way here, which definitely meant that the wraith would hear about it and come too, which definitely meant I was totally screwed. I’m sure you remember the whole shadow monster part well enough on your own.”

“It’s not the kind of thing you forget,” John nodded.

“And a day or so later, you come stumbling in here with blood all over you, and, well. I figured that if the wraith were getting confident enough to attack human settlements, they might have gotten a lot further in their rehabilitation than previously imagined. As today has shown us,” he waved his hand about miserably, “I was completely right. Not only that, but from the data I gathered on our little field trip I’d estimate that there are about three hundred hive ships waking up all over the Waste, and from the SGC’s calculations each hive contains at least five hundred wraith. Oh, and as a final touch? All the materials we’ve been able to unearth tell us one thing about the feeding habits of the wraith: they exclusively eat _people_. Which incidentally seems to be what gives them insanely long life spans and ability to heal from pretty much anything short of actual decapitation.”

 _An army of vengeful demons who_ eat _people_ , John told himself. “I can see how that’s going to be a point of contention.”

McKay snorted. “Trust me, they won’t even bother to enter the discussion. Do we hash it out with our livestock before we make them into burgers?”

“So there’s no chance of bringing them to our point of view, sort of thing?”

He was fixed with a look of perfect scorn. “Well, you’re welcome to _try._ Just let me know what you want me to say at your eulogy before you go in, because I doubt you’ll get a chance to afterwards.”

“Right. People-eating monsters with no sense of humor. Got it.”

“So now I have to convince the SGC that they’ve underestimated just how quickly the wraith are waking up and how many they are, except I have to find some way of doing it without giving away who I am, _and_ continue to keep the city a secret, _and_ find us a new power source before we lose all momentum completely and fall back to the bottom of the ocean without a shield, all the while making sure I’m not exposed as an unlicensed wizard!” McKay’s voice rose to a wail at the end of that marathon of a sentence and he let himself fall back to the bed, pulling the covers with him.

“Maybe you should just come clean about the whole thing,” John suggested. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

McKay’s eye slowly appeared from under the blankets. “You mean after admitting to using unauthorized magic _without a licence?_ ”

“Well, when you put it like that -”

“Oh god, there are so many worst things that I can’t even begin to...”

“So maybe not that,” John interrupted, before he’d have to fetch a paper bag or something. “But there’s got to be a way out of it, right?”

“If there had been, I would have found one by now, okay? I have dedicated large portions of my frankly substantial intellect to this for a _year_ now, and I just... can’t come up with anything.”

John shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe you just need a second pair of eyes.”

“It’s not like I expect you to understand. You and your - your - your hair.” McKay gestured helplessly.

“No, really,” John said. “It might not be as bad as you think.”

“What is it to you, anyway?” McKay asked, with such transparent hostility that you could see right to the quiet despair beneath.

“Well, you did save my life that one time,” John said, shrugging. “Two, if you count letting me stay here. I suppose I owe you one.”

McKay looked at him for a long time. “You’re serious. I mean, you’re really serious?”

“How come people are always asking me that?” John said.

“You’ve just got one of those faces, I can never tell when you’re kidding.”

“Well, for what it’s worth I’m serious. If there’s anything I can do, I’ll try to help out.”

“Oh.” McKay’s face hovered mid-expression, looking open and surprised and slightly disbelieving. “I... thanks.”

John shrugged. “You’re welcome.”

McKay stared at him for a while, and then he dropped his head into his hands. “Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t mean to - I don’t usually - it’s just been a lot to deal with lately.”

“Don’t worry about it,” John said, retrieving his mug from the nightstand and taking a sip. “If I’d spent the last year being in a very, very slow car chase with a demon while piloting a flying city, I’d probably be a bit frazzled, too.”  

McKay gave a pale huff of laughter and reached for the coffee too. He sat quietly for a while, looking into space.

“In that case,” he said slowly, “I might have an idea.”

He sent John the bright, slightly crazed look that John was starting to realize would bring a lot more excitement into his life than he’d ever asked for. “How would you like to try your hand at being a wizard for a few days?”

 


	6. In which plans are made and there is a salamander called Fred

 

For the next few days McKay only left his lab for infrequent but expansive meals, and whenever John checked in on him he’d be bent over a desk, fiddling with pieces of chalk and bone, steel wire and feathers and who knew what else. Sometimes he glanced up and greeted John with a distracted “Oh, hi, it’s you”, more often he didn’t even notice the doors sliding open and shut, and occasionally he’d wave John over to touch an Ancient device before he went back to completely ignoring the outside world.

“What the hell is he _doing_ in here?” John asked the city one night, when he’d found McKay sitting in exactly the same hunched, focused position five times in a row.The sixth time McKay was still in the same pose, head propped up in his palm, snoring gently. John shook his head and draped McKay’s jacket over his shoulders, at least.  

 _I’ve learned not to ask,_ the city said. _I find it’s better for my peace of mind. and future prospects of plausible deniability, come to that._   

For the most part John spent his time reading. McKay had handed him an armful of books that all went more or less ‘Sourcery for Dummies’, so John wouldn’t commit massive wizardly faux-pas at every turn in front of the royal court.

“You can get away with a certain irreverence for the rules if you go all out on the roguish charm,” McKay said, “everyone accepts the occasional rebel, I suppose it appeals to the anti-establishment streak in people, but not even that is going to save you if you go on about how you dabble in blood magic in your spare time.”

So John slogged his way through different forms of divination -  most of which seemed to involve some kind of offal - took an evening to study some of the most common incantations in modern use, and even happened upon a slim volume on magic as a natural resource and its role in upholding class structures and economic oppression. That was the only one he read cover to cover, mostly because McKay had scribbled things like ‘ugh _sociologists’_ and ‘see, this is why I went for science; an electron microscope doesn’t fucking care if you’re pure of heart before you use it’ and ‘unicorns are just great big horses with horns anyway, who are they to judge anyone’ in the margins.

 

Then, finally, the fifth day McKay turned up for breakfast, looking pale and grimy but also triumphant.

“Hey, Sheppard - catch.” McKay lobbed something at John as he entered the kitchen, and once John had scrambled to catch it he saw that it was a pendant on a leather cord.

“What’s this?” he asked.

McKay sat down heavily and pulled the bread basket towards him. “It’s a prototype disguise spell. I thought we should test it out before we send you out in front of the Academy’s best and brightest. Could you pass the butter?”

“We’re out,” John said. At McKay’s look of utter betrayal he added: “Well, you haven’t left your lab in days and the city hasn’t exactly endorsed my plans to go grocery shopping.”

McKay peeked into the bread basket, retrieved the two remaining slices of stale bread, put them on his plate and looked mournfully down at them. Sighing, he reached for the cheese. It turned out to have grown fuzzy green mold.

“Great,” McKay muttered, looking utterly defeated. “Just... great.”

John handed him the strawberry jam. He was getting an inkling that handling McKay was a bit like keeping a five year old from having a meltdown; make sure their blood sugar’s nice and even, talk in a calm, friendly tone, and if a tantrum seems imminent, be ready with something shiny - and preferably Ancient - to use as a distraction. It was working out this far.

“...thank you,” McKay mumbled.

“So if we’re going to test this thing, does that mean I’m allowed to go outside for a while?” John said, dangling the pendant. It was shaped like a flat metal disc and had no symbols or other marks on it.

“Necessarily,” McKay said around a mouthful. “I was thinking that we’d test how it holds up in fields of high magic by going to the mage market to shop for what we need for the final spell, but now a trip to the grocer’s is definitely in the cards too. Try it on.”

 

\-------

 

John spent most of the walk to the mage market being spooked by his own reflection. The first time he noticed, they were walking down a quiet side street with big shop windows on either side, and John had turned his head to look into a used book store when he spotted -

“Fuck,” he said, jumping back from a nearby shop window and the faceless, fuzzy shape it mirrored back at him. “Okay, seriously, McKay, that’s _creepy_.”

McKay waved his hands irritably. “That’s just because you’re the one wearing the spell, it’s not going to work right on _you_. Trust me, people looking _in_ aren’t even going to think about it, you’re just going to be... average. They'll just fill in your features with whatever they expect, you'll be practically non-descript.”

John eyed his reflection suspiciously anyway. “It looks like the sort of thing people threaten their children with when they won’t eat their greens.”

“Well, I’m telling you it’s going to work. And who’s the wizard here again?” McKay said snidely.

“Uh, neither of us?”

McKay squinted at him. “What?”

“Thought you said you never got your license,” John said. McKay harrumphed slightly, but didn’t seem particularly offended.

“Technically I suppose you’re right. Okay, it’s down this street and to the right.”

The mage market had a couple of streets all to itself, the displays ranging from venerable-looking buildings with wrought iron dragons guarding the doors, to rickety stalls overladen with various wares that looked vaguely but unpleasantly organic in nature. Clouds of colored smoke swirled around, coming from some earthenware jugs that a woman wrapped entirely in silk shawls was setting out - McKay sneezed copiously every time a cloud drifted by. Several of the stalls had strange animals locked up in cages, all of them nervous and doing what most animals did when crowded together and made nervous - bleating, squawking and crapping. John resolved to watch where he put his feet.   

McKay seemed to know where he was going, so John just trailed quietly after him, here and there rebuking people who trotted up to him and asked if the young man would be interested in purchasing some potions that would, you know, help envigour an enfeebled constitution, did the young man have a wife, would he perhaps like to impress her with his range and stamina, if the young man knew what they were getting at. McKay sniggered each time, probably since he seemed to be well-known here and wasn’t approached even once.

They ended up at a stall where different herbs and roots were laid out neatly on grubby tablecloths and birds not unlike parrots were perched in cages. There was a bowl with small black seeds beside the cages, accompanied by a sign that said you were free to feed the birds as long as you took full responsibility for any potential dismemberment that might result.

John entertained himself with feeding the birds with the sweet-smelling seeds through the bars of their cages and listening to McKay haggling with the elderly stall owner in the background.

“Five crowns? Yeah, right. Listen up, lady, we both know it’s not worth even half that.”

“It’s an excellent salamander, and they don’t come cheap these days, my boy. Hard to get people to travel to the volcanoes to catch them, what with the war going on.”

“I can see its scales shedding from here! _And_ it’s really thin. That is not a happy little buddy, you probably fished him out from a blacksmith’s forge yesterday and fed him lamp oil and iron filings.”

Sounding like it pained her to the very depth of her soul to suggest it, the old lady said: “Fine, fine, for that price I would also be willing to part with...” She looked around conspiratorially and pulled out a cage covered by a piece of tattered red velvet. “This.”

“Right. _Right_. And what, exactly, is _this_?”

“Ah, see, it’s a mirrorbird - mystical, intensely magical creatures from foreign lands, which the sorcerers in those parts use for - ”  

“It’s a kestrel,” McKay said, speaking slowly and carefully as if to a child. “You’ve spraypainted it silver, but it’s still just a kestrel.”

“You accuse me of cheating my customers?” the woman boomed, her impressive bosom quivering with indignation. “Of simple swindle?”

“And cruelty to animals, while we’re at it,” McKay said. The kestrel looked at him dolefully through the artlessly sprinkled paint. “Listen, I’ll give you two crowns for the salamander, and that’s more than it’s worth. Get that poor bird cleaned up and we’ll say nothing more about it.”

The woman grinned a huge, largely toothless grin. “Always a pleasure doing business with you, Doctor McKay.”

“Aw, you only say that because I’m the only person who dares to haggle with you,” McKay said, handing over the two crowns and waiting as the woman rooted around in a small coal stove with a pair of barbecue tongs. She deftly fished out a newt-like creature and dropped it onto the counter. The salamander was red-hot from the coals, giving off a slight glow.

“I’d give it a few minutes to cool down if I were you, boy,” she said, then turned to the next customer with a delighted cry of “Ah, my dear man, I see you’ve set your eye on our ground unicorn horns, excellent choice.”

“More like rhinoceros horn mixed in with glitter, I’d say,” McKay muttered darkly, pulling out the shopping list he’d thrown together and scanning it with a furrowed brow.   

When cooled down the salamander was almost the color of dried blood, but here and there the scales were shedding and leaving dull grey skin peeking through. It seemed energetic enough, though, studying its surroundings with big black eyes that somehow endeavored to look hopeful.

“One of us should probably keep it on us - they get ill real fast if they cool down too much,” McKay said, picking it up carefully.  

“Sure,” John said, holding out his hand for it. The salamander still felt surprisingly hot against his palm, and its small claws dug in.

As they started walking through the marketplace again, the salamander got braver and more inquisitive, crawling across John’s palm like it was exploring uncharted territories.  

“Pretty cute, isn’t he?” John said, gently stroking it over the head with one finger.  

McKay blinked at him, faltering in his scrutiny of the shopping list. “What? Well, I suppose. I hadn’t considered it before.”

The salamander turned its head to one side, gazing solemnly up at them.

“Hi there, little buddy,” John said, letting the salamander climb over his arm, where it sniffed curiously at his skin. “You got a name or something?”

“Of course it doesn’t,” McKay said wearily.

John ignored him, turning his arm so the salamander wouldn’t tumble off in exploratory joy. “Hm. Fred. You look like a Fred. You okay with that?”

“You and your... naming things,” McKay mumbled, but he still started forward when it looked like Fred the salamander was going to fall off. “Okay, please hold on to him properly, I can’t afford another one in a while.”

“I don’t know, you seemed to have that stall owner wrapped around your little finger,” John said, sliding Fred into his breast pocket anyway.

“Maybe so, but that’s because I always pay a little extra. I don’t even want to consider what she’d accept in place of monetary compensation,” McKay said.

“What, you’re saying you wouldn’t be up for some remunerative hanky p- ”

McKay made a face at him. “Oh god, please shut up? Please? The mental images, I don’t think I could live with them.”

John just grinned and followed McKay into the more mundane world of bakeries and tailors and grocery stores.

 

Half an hour later, in the middle of buying bread, they realized that Fred the salamander had gnawed a hole in John’s breast pocket and was happily nibbling away on the disguise spell, causing it to flicker on and off ominously. They made a hasty retreat after that.

 

\-------

 

“Okay so this,” McKay said, struggling to put his armful of clothes and miscellaneous wizardly objects down on the lab bench without it all scrambling to the floor, “was the best I could find on such short notice. Wizards usually get their clothes from a personal tailor, but there’s nothing that says we can’t use a bit of enchantment to make it look right.”

John warily picked up a silver ring in the shape of a skull. “None of this comes pre-cursed, does it?”

McKay rolled his eyes and turned to a computer terminal. “Not unless someone bothered to jinx the ‘5 for the price of 7’ jar I found them in, no. Hm. So I’ll let the city synthesize the spell this time - there’s a charm to the handcrafted stuff, of course, but I’d rather be safe and boring than stylish and sorry.”

“It’ll take me, like, five minutes,” the city said smugly. “Human spells are ridiculously rudimentary.”

McKay grunted noncommittally and started typing at the console. “You should just get changed, so we can make sure it’ll look right with what you’ll be wearing,” he told John without turning around. Since McKay’s back was turned anyway, John quickly stripped down and then slipped into the new clothes. He spent some time figuring out the different buckles and fastenings, but eventually he had put the outfit on the way he judged it was supposed to go .

“Uh...” he said, looking down his chest.

“Ah, you’re done?” McKay said, glancing over his shoulder. “Yeah, that looks about right.”  

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” John said, staring at himself in the mirror the city had proudly produced from one wall. The last time he’d seen that much cleavage in one place was when Nancy’s aunt had had a bit too much to drink that one Midsummer’s Feast and cornered him in the kitchen.

“Well, at least it’s all black,” McKay said, tipping his head to the side and looking John up and down. “Most wizards go for the reds and purples, but I guess you can get away with something more subdued seeing as you’re supposed to be, you know, sort of… shady.”

“It’s open almost to my navel.”

“Hey, don’t look at me, there’s a reason I’ve never taken to the whole sorcerer look. You’ve got to look convincing, though, and this is what those guys wear. At least we don’t need to include a cape or anything like that, that went out of style decades ago. You’re still sure about the earring thing?”

“No piercings, ears or elsewhere,” John said severely.

McKay shrugged in a way that suggested ‘fair enough’. He scanned John from top to toe one last time, narrowed his eyes, picked up a piece of jewelry and held it up to John’s chest as if he was assessing a painting. “We should probably use this as a vessel for the disguise spell - everyone knows wizards are entitled by law to carry enchanted jewelry. They’re peacocks like that, no one’s going to take a second look at it. Apart from that I think that’s it, you’re good to go.”

“I look dumb,” John said flatly. His pants were so tight he was starting to worry about his ability to father children.

“No, you don’t,” McKay said emphatically, and when John looked at him sideways his ears turned pink and he added, “you’re going to fit right in, is what I mean. It looks very… authentic.”  

John wiggled the pointy-toed boot around disconsolately. “There are sequins on my shoes.”

“Yes, well, suck it up, _you’re_ not going to have to stand around pretending that Kavanagh’s contributions are just as valid as anyone else’s. You can just… lounge around in a corner somewhere with a glass of wine, something like that. Perfectly normal wizardly behavior.”

“I _like_ the sequins,” the city said. “Very sparkly, very nice.”

“Like a walking disco ball,” John said. Over in the corner Fred the salamander - happily cradled in a bowl of red-hot stones that McKay had tinkered together with the Ancient radiator-thingy - made a happy squeaking sound and dove down between the stones again. At least someone was having a good time.

“Is there anything we can do about the hair?” Rodney said, waving his hands vaguely at the level of John’s face. John considered it.

“Short of keeping it down with iron clamps?” he asked. “Not for more than an hour or so at a time, no. It sort of… sticks back up, no matter what I do. My mom used to - no.”

“Okay, then we better include that in the spell, because it’s rather… recognizable. You got all that?” Rodney said, turning to the city.

“Yep.”

“What do you think, is it going to work?”

“How should I know, you people all look the same to me,” the city said. “But as I said earlier, I like the sequins.”

“I hate you,” John said despondently.

“Hey, wait, what about this?” McKay said suddenly, stepping closer and, seemingly, pointing to John’s left nipple. John leaned back slightly and squinted down himself to figure out what McKay meant.

“What about my - oh. That.” The scar the city had left on his chest was peeking out from the shirt, barely noticeable if you weren’t looking. “It’s... just an old scar, got it when I was a kid.”

“Huh. Do I _want_ to know what the hell you were doing as a kid to get a scar like that? Because I’ve seen people who got hit by lightning, and - ”

“Nah. It’s a boring story,” John said. “No lightning strikes, just... stupid kid stuff.”

The city said: “I guess we should cover up that too. Better not leave any distinguishable marks, right?”

“Right,” McKay said. “Right, just... patch over it. That’s it, I think, we’re ready to go?”

“Just upload the spell and leave the raw materials, and I’ll get right to it,” the city said, one of the consoles opening to reveal a pair of robotic arms flexing their grabbers.

McKay laid out the stuff he’d bought at the mage market - a small vial of fresh salamander blood as donated by Fred, some stones with strange swirling colors and shapes, small indigo flowers twined together in long strips by their stems, something that looked like a string of teeth from different animals, mirror shards, all kinds of other stuff which John preferred not to know about.

“The trick is to buy a lot of stuff with a low magical content rather than a couple of things that are brimming with it,” McKay said, standing back and dusting off his hands. “You don’t need a license to buy sorcerer knick-knacks, and it adds up a lot faster than you’d think. You’ll be okay down here?”  

“ _Yes_ , Rodney,” the city said. “I could do this with the operating power of a pocket calculator. You guys should get some rest, it’s a big day tomorrow.”

Since Fred had shown a delighted tendency to eat away at the city’s walls, consoles, floors and lamp fixtures when left unattended, John volunteered to take him with him to the gate room and keep an eye on him. Once he was back in the gate room, though, he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to sleep. His body was pulling in on itself, contracting as if trying to ward of a chill. Not a chance he was going to unwind enough to drift off.

“How d’you feel about a little late night reading, buddy?” John asked Fred the salamander, putting the stone bowl down and reaching for the books he’d stacked beside his cot. Fred nibbled his finger affectionately and sank back down between his stones with a blissed little sigh.

John read about rings of power and how sorcerers customarily wore long magnificent cloaks before planes and other air transports had made it too risky - with some rather unpleasant illustrations of what a sorcerer post-jet engine looked like - and tried to not think about what the hell he’d agreed to do tomorrow. Impersonating a wizard in front of some of the most important people in the country. Good job, John. This is the kind of thinking that’ll make them reconsider abolishing the whole hung, drawn and quartered thing. And to think your superiors always said you would never go far with that attitude.

After an hour or so he heard footsteps approaching, and McKay padded out into the gate room, wearing a pair of pyjama pants and the same tired t-shirt John had seen before. He stood in the middle of the floor for a while, idly scratching his belly and looking like he was trying to remember what he was supposed to be doing. Then he noticed John sitting on the edge of the gate room stairs.

“Oh. Hi.” McKay stopped. “You’re still up. Obviously.”

“Uh-huh,” John said. McKay’s hair still looked damp from a shower, standing up on one side as if it had been rubbing against a pillow. He scratched a hand through it absently, making it even messier. “So are you.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” McKay said. He moved restlessly from foot to foot, fingers drumming against his thigh. “It, uh, it happens sometimes. I usually, when I... I go to the top of the tower for a while.”

“I thought you didn’t know about the transporters before. That’s quite a trip.”

“I didn’t,” McKay said. “I just figured that the stairs would be good exercise for when we’ll all have to run for our lives.”  

A silence that was just slightly too long settled between them. McKay rocked on his heels and said: “Do you want to come?”

“What?”

“I mean, if you can’t sleep either, and... well, the view is pretty great from up there. If you want to, I mean.”

John glanced down at the dusty tomes he still hadn’t gotten through. One of them was titled ‘Necromancy For the Beginner; the Bare Bones of Waking the Dead’. He didn’t imagine he’d need an army of the living dead by tomorrow. “Sure.” He picked up the stone bowl and pushed to his feet.

McKay nodded, and John followed him to the nearest transporter - “Well, I’m not going to take the stairs _now_ ,” McKay said dismissively - and stepped into the big room at the top of the tower. Everything was bathed in a milky wash of moonlight, creating crisp planes of light and shadow. McKay’s shadow stretched out long and sharp behind him as he went over to where one of the boxes filled with Ancient devices was now pushed against a wall.

“I just like to have something to keep my hands busy, okay,” McKay said as John picked up a small orange-yellow disc about the size of a coin. “Put that down, we don’t know what your magic genes are going to implore it to do.”

He pushed the box aside with his foot and sat down with his back against the wall, glancing out the window at the sea of stars puddling in the night sky. John settled down beside him, putting the stone bowl down well away from the Ancient gizmos - who knew what was going to happen if Fred chewed on one of those.

McKay sat with his elbows resting on his knees, so pale that his skin went smooth and almost translucent in the moonlight. It made him look strangely younger.

“So, these people we’re going to meet... ” John said after a while.

Blinking as if resurfacing from deep thought, McKay said: “Uh, sorcerers, probably a handpicked group of military people, some higher officials from the royal court, but mostly it’s the SGC. They’ve been at the front of developing new weapons technology for years now, they’re always the first to get invited.”

“Anyone you know who’s going to be there?”

McKay lifted his chin slightly. “In all probability.”

“Is that going to be a problem? Didn’t sound like you parted ways on the best of terms.”

“Of course it’s not going to be a problem,” McKay said stiffly. Then, at John’s look, he amended, “Okay, so maybe... maybe some problems. There are some... recent developments that may prove tricky to explain.”

“You haven’t told them about this place, have you.”

McKay looked wretched. “It’s not as much a secret as a... careful omission.”

“It’s practically the size of a small continent; it takes a lot of omitting.”

“Do you realize how you could turn the tide of war with the city? Because I think I do, and it’s not a pretty mental image, Major. When fully powered this place has weapons unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. The SGC might have the best of intentions, but once the rest of the world discovers just the capacity for destruction the city has I really doubt they’ll show a similar level of self-restraint. I’m not exactly a fan of the Genii and their paranoid quest to take over the world, but they don’t deserve that.”

The blurry black and white photo of the heaps of rubble that had once been a Genii village projected itself onto the inside of John’s eyelids. “I see what you mean.”

“Besides,” McKay sighed, “it’s what the city wants, and under the circumstances I guess that’s... the main thing.”

“It told you that?”

“It was almost the first thing it said after it woke up,” McKay said. “Before it asked where it was or anything like that. It just asked me not to tell anyone that I’d found it. To be honest I’m not sure how lucid it really was at that point, but it was pretty urgent about it.”

“Nobody’s at their best after a twenty thousand year long nap, I suppose,” John said reflectively.

“Yeah, it was pretty... muddled. It seems to have pepped up a little now that you’re here, though - maybe it’s reacting to the gene,“ McKay said. When John glanced over at him he was quirking a tiny smile, curled up comfortably against the wall while he looked out of the windows. John didn’t think he’d ever seen McKay so still before.

“Yeah, maybe,” John said.

They sat quietly for a while. McKay rooted through the box with Ancient devices and spend some time fiddling with the nightlight thing from before, making the colors strobe with all the colors of the rainbow as the beam scattered across the floor. “Well, at least now there’s two of us to -”

He was broken off by a piercing shriek and a flurry of movement as Fred bounced out of his bowl and down on the floor, chasing after the shifting colors of the nightlight with excited squeals, completely undeterred by the fact that he was not in fact throwing himself at anything tangible.

McKay recovered first. “Huh,” he said, shifting the angle of the beam a little so that Fred scurried further away. “It must trigger some kind of instinct in him. Maybe he perceives light differently.”

“Or maybe we’ve just bought a very weird salamander,” John said. “Hang on, let me try something.”

He took the nightlight from McKay and pointed it against the opposite wall. With a sound much louder than his little body should be able to produce, Fred launched himself  at the wall and somehow managed to stick there by his claws.

“Yeah, okay, you may have a point,” McKay said, an edge of laughter to his voice.

There came a deep and heartfelt sigh from seemingly all around, and then the city said: “What is that climbing all over the walls?”

“Nothing,” John said insincerely, twitching the nightlight thing to the left.

“I thought I told you two to go to _bed_ ,” the city moaned. “And can you get that lizard thing to stop doing that, it tickles.”

“Yes, mom,” McKay said, and as John grinned the city muttered something that might very well have been dirty and left to work on the spell again.   

 

\-------

 

The next morning reminded John oddly of his wedding day; the knowledge of something big looming up in your future wrapped up in a sleepy blur of hasty showers and coffee and trying to figure out how the hell you did up your clothes with the few brain cells that weren’t still half asleep. John spent a humiliatingly long time navigating the shirt buttons of the wizard outfit, squinting down at them like they were strange and advanced machinery, and McKay swore so badly when he fumblingly failed to tie his tie that the city came to his rescue and did it for him.

“Thank you,” he muttered when the knot was secured, still red in the face and slightly wild-eyed.

“Don’t mention it, some spatial disorientation is only to be expected from creatures with such poor processing capacity,” the city said kindly, retrieving its mechanical arms. McKay mumbled darkly to himself and looked around for his coffee mug until John found it on a lab bench and handed it to him.

The meeting wasn’t before noon, but McKay insisted that they should go over the plan one last time and test all the equipment they’d be using thoroughly.

“Here,” he said, holding out his hand for John and dropping something in his palm.

“Cufflinks?” John said, rolling them between his fingers. The cufflinks were neat and simple, silver and mother of pearl.

“Or,” McKay said, fastening another pair to his own shirt cuffs, “hidden radio transmitters. So we can communicate without being seen constantly huddling together, you see?”

“Because being seen talking into your sleeves is so much less suspect,” John said, but he put them on anyway.

“Oh, please, I’ve thought about this, you don’t have to talk directly into it. Just tap it gently and it’ll pick up whatever you say, no matter where you keep your hands. Two taps to make it stop transmitting again.”

“Neat,” John said. He tapped the cufflink once and brought it up to his mouth in that patented move from every bad spy flick in history, speaking in a hoarse conspiratorial whisper. “So... can you hear me?”

McKay gave him a dirty look. “Seeing as I’m standing right next to you at the moment... Okay, so if I’ve done the spell right, only you should be able to hear the transmission, so you don’t have to worry about standing in a corner somewhere if I talk to you. No one’s going to overhear it.”

They both finished dressing, John putting his feet into the pointy sequined shoes with some resignation.

“So, just to be clear, the game plan is that as far as you’re able you won’t do anything except stand around and look mutely mysterious,” McKay said, lifting his eyebrows meaningfully at John. “And if anyone starts to pry, just... be short and obtuse. That shouldn’t give you any trouble.”

John rolled his eyes at the barely disguised dig. “And if they ask me something real, like why they can’t find me in their records?”

“Then it’s because you are a foreigner who only recently decided to fight on the side of the Empire, since you now see that the values it embodies are worthy and good and full of beauty and... you get the general principle,” McKay said, waving the question away like it was an annoying fly. “Lots of sorcerers have patchy backgrounds these days, and they can’t afford to refuse you. Him. The wizard Mer. It’s mostly when you’re already in the government’s service that they go ballistic if you do some unauthorized hexing; means they’re partly responsible.”  

“Right.”

“I’m going to go pick up the disguise spell and then I think we should be good to go,” McKay said distractedly, scurrying out the door and down the hallway.

 _John,_ the city said. _while he’s not here, there’s something I need to talk to you about._

“Talk away,” John said, trying to find a way of standing that didn’t make his trousers cling in unseemly ways.

 _since the meeting is scheduled for the whole day, you’ll probably have to stay away from me for quite some time,_ the city said. _it might become uncomfortable after a while._

“Uncomfortable like ‘there’s a crease in my sock and it’s driving me mad’ kind of thing?” John said, against all hope.

 _...uncomfortable like deep burning pain_ , the city said.

“Ah. Of course.”

_I just want you to know that it’s not dangerous. well. not for a day or so, anyway. nothing under three days should prove lethal. now, four days... but really, it’s only going to be this one day, right? probably nothing to worry about at all. I just... wanted you to be prepared._

“Well, thank y -”

“Here, it’s done,” McKay said,  reappearing and handing over the finished pendant. John turned it over in his hands.

“It’s a bird,” he said, glancing up at McKay.

“Yeah, it’s a phoenix. I thought it was fitting, because of, you know, the... flying and everything.” The corner of McKay’s mouth pulled down uncomfortably. “I mean, if you’d like something else we could probably transfer the spell to another -”

“Nah, it’s fine,” John said, slipping the leather cord over his head. “Okay, we probably should get going.”

 

\-------

 

They’d agreed that it would be best that they arrived at the palace separately, and that McKay should be the first to go through the gate - he’d be in a better position to tell if something was out of order, since he already knew the place. So John stayed behind for about fifteen minutes after McKay disappeared through the gate before he followed, stepping through the shimmering blue surface and onto cobbles. It was an overcast day in the capital, grey and damp like an old washcloth, and everyone John encountered on his way to the palace was huddled deep in their overcoats and capes, moving quickly and without looking around. When he finally entered the wide open courtyard in front of the palace, a small, dingy-looking dog with gingery light brown fur showed some interest, trailing after him and tentatively sniffing his trouser leg.

“Hey,” John said, gently pushing it away with his foot as he started in on the long, steep stairs up to the main entrance. “Don’t do that, I’ll end up stepping on you.”

The dog gave a small huff but backed off, climbing the stairs side by side with John instead. At the top, one of the two doormen nodded respectfully and took a step forwards.

“If you’d please show me your invitation, sir...” John handed over the scroll with the red seal and the man inspected it carefully before nodding again and pulling a small golden pin from a pouch he kept in his belt. “That’s all in order. Just put this on wherever you’d like as long as it’s visible. Have a good evening, sir.”

His colleague, a small woman who fit her uniform badly and held a cigarette half-heartedly concealed in her free hand, briefly waved a black plastic rod over John’s body. When nothing happened she too nodded and waved him through. None of them said anything when the dog followed him, so John supposed that had to be all right.

Once inside another member of the palace staff lead him down corridors decorated with rich carpets in red and gold until they reached a set of big double doors. Even through the doors you could hear the heavy buzz of conversation. The guide knocked on the door three times and it swung open, the noise breaking like a great wave into the corridor.

The room was enormous, with a ceiling almost as tall as the ones back in the city, gilded beams glittering up there in the half-shadows. Colored tiles covered the floor, slickly reflecting the light from the candles held magically aloft safely above the heads of the crowd. Along the walls hung heavy blood-red tapestries, and from one end of the room to the other ran a buffet table that looked ready to collapse under the weight of food and exquisite silverware.

John avoided the urge to whistle under his breath and aimed for an air of wizardly disinterest at the in-your-face grandeur. If you could bend time and space to your will, a couple of flashy choices in interior design probably wouldn’t impress you, he figured.

The guide exchanged some whispered words with another uniformed woman who stood beside the doors before she hurried away, giving John a quick smile as she passed. The new woman gave a short bow, said: “Welcome, sir,” and then announced to the room at large: “The great wizard Mer!”

Her voice barely made a dent in the steady hum of conversation; a few nearby guests glanced curiously in his direction, but other than that his arrival fortunately didn’t seem to cause much of a stir. The little dog headbutted John’s ankle and barked twice before setting off into the crowd, weaving between legs and out of sight.

“The wizard Mer?” said someone beside him, and John turned towards the voice. It turned out to belong to a tall thin woman with a crooked smile.

“Yes?”

She reached out her hand. “We’re so happy you could make it. My name is Doctor Elizabeth Weir, I am the head of one of our non-military departments. I am usually responsible for the sorcerers in the SGC’s service.”

“Nice to meet you,” John said, shaking her hand. “So... you’d be my boss?”

She gave a small chuckle. “Something like that. Today, though, I just thought I’d offer to give you a little overview of what it is we do here, introduce you to some people, that sort of thing? We are very eager to recruit more sorcerers at this point.”

Since he doubted his wizard act was going to survive prolonged scrutiny, John said: “Well, that’s very thoughtful of you, but...”

“Hang on, excuse me for just one second... yes, this is Weir?” She put her hand to her ear, brow furrowing as she listened. “ _What?_ I thought Doctor Lee said that was all in order a week ago - no, no, don’t do anything about it, none of you are qualified curse breakers. I’ll be there in a minute. Do you see now how those memos about not buying antiques from unvetted sources are not just to liven up your trash bins, hm?” Doctor Weir turned to John with an apologetic smile.“I am so sorry, I would have liked to introduce you to more guests but I have to run - for now, this is Teyla Emmagan, ambassador of the people of Athos. It’s a small province almost at the border of the Waste. Her people is an important source of intel for us.”

She stepped aside to reveal a smaller woman with dark copper-colored skin and wavy chestnut hair, who smiled at him. Doctor Weir ran off, her face pinched in the way John remembered from his primary school teacher. It was the look of someone who was the only person in the room who wouldn’t try to eat the chalk.

“I am honored to make your acquaintance,” Teyla Emmagan said, ducking her head slightly.

“Likewise,” John said, giving a small bow that he hoped looked more or less like the one he’d seen illustrated in one of McKay’s books.

She tipped her head to one side, her smile unwavering. “I hope you do not think me rude, but I must admit that I have not heard of you before - are you new to these parts?”

“Pretty new, yeah,” John said. “Came over to help out with the war. Between you guys and the Genii I sure know who I prefer.”

“It is most admirable to value one’s principles over one’s national affiliation.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Please excuse me, I have many people with whom I need to speak tonight - I trust we shall have the chance to meet again after the main discussion? I would be very interested in hearing the viewpoints of someone from outside the Empire.”

“Nothing would make me happier,” John said, and Teyla Emmagan gave him another wide, pleasant smile and disappeared into the crowd. She walked like a dancer, perfectly poised, the way Nancy had.

“ _On second thought, maybe those pants are a little too tight,_ ” McKay said snidely on the radio.

“Huh?” John said, almost looking around for him before he caught himself.

“ _Nevermind._ ”

John managed to avoid talking to anyone else for a while, until a waiter sidled up to him, holding out his tray. “Drink, sir?”

“Yeah, thanks,” John said, grateful to have something to do with his hands. He tasted the drink and looked around him, his eyes aching faintly with the mess of faces and strongly colored clothes and jewelry - just a week ago he’d thought a city street had seemed impossibly busy, and that had been a breeze in comparison. Blocking out as much of it as he could, John let the voices become just one big noise, like the roar of the ocean; nothing he needed to pay attention to, nothing to do with him.  

“For fuck’s _sake_ , Carson!” he suddenly heard Rodney exclaim from over by the buffet table. The scraggly-bearded man standing beside him held his hands up helplessly.

“I’m _sorry_ , Rodney, I didn’t know that was going to happen! I didn’t even want to sit in the bloody chair in the first place!”

Rodney waved the chicken skewer he was holding indignantly. “I turn my back on you for five minutes and you blow up perhaps _the_ most important technological and archeological site in all of history?”

“I didn’t mean to!” The man’s heavily accented voice rose to a wail.

“Well, tough! I hadn’t even had a proper look at it before you blew it to kingdom come!”

“Aye, because it is always about you, isn’t it?”

“Hey, don’t play high and mighty here, _I’ve_ never blown up an Ancient outpost.”

John weaved through the crowd until he found himself with his back against a wall, oddly comforted by the simple straightforward solidity of it against his shoulders.  

There was a small group of women standing to his left, all of them teetering uncomfortably on their high heels like people who usually went in for practical footwear. They were talking among themselves, gathered around a small tray of  canapes.

Then he heard one of them mention ‘Rodney McKay’ and started paying more attention.

“...he hasn’t published anything in _ages_ , though. I was hearing that he’d become a weird hermit or something. I was surprised to see him here, was all.”

“Last thing I heard from Bill Lee was that he’d found himself a young man,” said a woman in a blue dress, lifting her eyebrows meaningfully. “Answered the door when he came around to hand over McKay’s invitation, he said.”

“What - really? _McKay_? Huh. Wouldn’t have guessed it.”

“Makes sense though, now that I think about it - no girlfriends, can’t talk to women... aggressively hits on Colonel Carter to put up a cover...”

“I always thought he was just an asshole,” one of the other women said. “Hm. No, I still think that.”

“Yes, well. Nothing that says you can’t be both gay _and_ an asshole.”

“Just don’t tell Miko, okay, it’d be a shame to upset her. I’ve never understood what she sees in him anyway, maybe she’s secretly a masochist. Hey, Biro, did you try these lobster things? They’re actually kind of amazing.”

“Sir, are you alright?” a passing waiter asked John, looking at him with a worried crease between her eyebrows. “Only you look a bit... pained.”

“Fine, I’m quite fine, thank you,” John managed, wondering idly if you could die from suppressed laughter. He moved away from the group of women to avoid further incident.

“ _Hey, are you there?_ ” McKay said on the radio. “ _I think they’re getting ready for the main event. Maybe we should make sure to get seats not too far apart, in case something happens._ ”

“Good idea. I’m right behind the pillar with the nymph - or whatever it is - carved into it.”

“ _Hm. Yeah, okay, I can see you._ ”

John peered around the pillar. He’d only just met McKay’s eyes when someone came between them. A tall woman with short blond hair and a green suit strode over to McKay and glared at him. “ _There_ you are,” she said, obviously annoyed.

“Oh, uh, Sam. Hi.” McKay grinned the biggest, most ingratiating grin John had ever seen cross his face. It was somehow unsettling.  

“Where the hell have you been, I thought you’d agreed to help Zelenka with the Al’kesh diagnostics he’d been struggling with!”

McKay abruptly looked like he was the only kid in class who hadn’t realized there was going to be a test today. “The Al - what?”

“The ship we found half a year ago. We suspect it’s from the days of the goa’uld empire.”

“... from the what?”

“The _goa’uld_ , McKay,” Carter said impatiently. “Didn’t you read your orientation?”

“Well, I’ve - see, I’ve been busy,” Rodney said, with a trace of desperation.

The woman closed her eyes and tipped her head back. She looked like she was counting silently to ten. “Okay. Right. Well, you’re coming with me to have a look at it with him anyway, so... come on.”

“Hey, wait, I was -”

But she’d grabbed him by the arm and hauled him off into the crowd. John shrugged and sipped his drink, keeping his back to the wall. McKay had been right; most people gave him a wide berth, only throwing him nervous looks from time to time. There were definite perks of the job to wizardry.

That was, he was left alone until a pleasant female voice said. “The wizard Mer? May I have a quick word with you?”

“Sure -” John began to say, but before he could finish he felt the wall behind him give way - not the wall, he suddenly realized; he’d been leaning against a door - and he tumbled into a cold, quiet corridor, only narrowly avoided falling right on his ass. The door snicked shut behind him and his body acted for him, sending out a punch before he even realized what had happened.

His blow was shrugged off easily and he felt one solid grip close over his underarm and another on his wrist, which meant - shit - that he was caught off balance and went down hard as he was heaved over a shoulder and onto the stone floor. He immediately jerked his hips to the side to shake off whoever was attacking him, but they knew what they were doing, not even giving him a second to twist free and flip their positions. In one sharp movement his arm was wrenched behind his back, far enough that he could feel important things were going to snap if he struggled.  

He gasped for air as a knee was pressed into his upper back, keeping him pinned to the floor. Then the cold metal of a knife came to rest against his neck. It didn’t draw blood, but it was angled to suggest that it very well could if necessary.

“So,” said Teyla Emmagan, all warmth drained from her voice. “Give me one reason I should not kill you, _wraith._ ”


	7. In which John possibly makes a new friend

 

John lay there with a faceful of icy stone for a while, trying to decode that sentence.

“What?” he said finally, except it came out more like a muffled “whhan?”.

She pushed her knee more firmly into his upper back for a moment and he whimpered at the strain it put on his arm. “Do not play games with me, or you will regret it.”  

“Ow,” John said, finally managing to move his head to the side so his words came out more clearly, “no, seriously, I mean it, I have no idea what you’re talking about. What do the wraith have to do with anything? Ah, shit, could you please stop _doing_ that?”

“I can sense it on you,” she hissed. “There is a stink of wraith magic all around you. What is your purpose here?”

“You’ve got the Gift,” John said when the words sunk in, surprised. The ability to sense and distinguish between different forms of magic was rare, and most of the people who had it were famous sorcerers in their own right.

“Answer me.”

As if it were happening again right in that moment, John felt the slip of purple paper sliding between his ribs under the hand of the demon, sinking into his skin, his flesh.

“It’s a long story,” John said, “but not, I’d like to stress, because I’ve got anything to do with the wraith. My life has just been kind of weird lately.”

She sat back just enough to lift the pressure from John’s back, but still held the knife where it was. “Turn over.”

John held his palms up pacifyingly and wriggled onto his back with slow and predictable movements. “This is all a big misunderstanding,” he said.

“Really,” she said, and you could have set up an entire icicle industry around her voice.

“Listen, I can prove it.” He slowly moved his hand to the pendant around his neck, pinching it lightly between finger and thumb. “This thing must be throwing you off. Just let me take it off, and you’ll see.”

She looked down at him coolly. “What is it?” she asked, edging the tip of the knife under the pendant and lifting it slightly.

“It’s a disguise spell. Don’t ask me how it works, though, I didn’t make it. I’m... not really all that wizardly. I’m standing in for, uh, a friend who couldn’t make it.”

After a couple of long, slow blinks she said: “Take it off.” She put the knife to his throat while he wriggled his arms free and lifted the leather cord over his head. Then he put it down on the floor beside him, glancing up to gauge her reaction.

Very, very slowly, Teyla Emmagan put her finger on his chest and followed the fractured lines of the scar there. “You were not lying,” she said quietly.Her dark eyes trailed over his face expressionlessly, her finger still on his chest. “What is your real name?”

“John. John Sheppard.”

A tiny smile quirked at the corner of her mouth. “Then you are indeed no wizard, if you give your birth name so thoughtlessly.”

“I’m kind of new to this thing,” John agreed. “Could you... please let me sit up?”

She kneeled up, lifting the weight on his chest. The knife was still in her hand, though, so John found it wise to ask: “So we’re both on the same page here - I’m not a wraith, no need to slap me around anymore?”

“You have made a convincing case,” she said shortly. Then her eyes crinkled. “Also, I believe that a real demon would have put up a much more convincing fight.”

John sat up with a wince. “I wish I could say it was only my pride that got bruised.”

Teyla lifted the pendant with the blade of her knife. “I am sorry. I could not sense it properly through this, but now I feel the wraith magic more clearly. Right here, behind your ribs. It is only a small thing, but it feels very new. ”

“It’s a spell. I think.”

“It is not enough to mark you as a demon, certainly. I must apologize for my behavior, John Sheppard. I have no quarrel with those who have been hurt by the wraith.”

“Call me John,” he said, as she reached out her hand and helped him up. Her hands were rough and warm, callused as if from wielding weapons.

“As you wish. All that remains now, John, is explaining why you are here, if you are not -”

She broke off as the door opened a crack. A figure slipped in and the door shut. Teyla looked ready to attack again, but John stayed her by waving his hands. “No, don’t, it’s okay. He’s with me.”

“Sheppard?” McKay said, his hands trembling slightly where they clutched a gun. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, Rodney, I’m fine.” Then, when McKay didn’t move: “So you can put the gun down.”

“Are you sure?” McKay said tightly. John craned his neck to get a better look at the gun.

“Did you even flick off the safety?”

McKay looked down at his hands in surprise, reddened slightly and lowered the gun. “So,” he said, “would anyone care to tell me what the hell’s going on here? I heard a lot of moaning and crashing over the radio, I hadn’t expected you to be standing around chatting.”

“Well, I - ” John began, but he shut up when he heard footsteps approaching.

“If you have recently encountered the wraith, I believe we have much more to talk about,” Teyla said. “Will you have time to meet me after this?”

John glanced over at McKay, who said: “Uh, well, sure, but -”

“Good. I will contact you with further information. And...” She smiled at John. “Again, I apologize for my... rash behavior before.”

“At least you stopped short of dislocating my shoulder,” John said magnanimously, slipping the disguise spell over his head again.

She disappeared out the door just as a waiter rounded the corner. McKay immediately held the gun behind his back, looking fifty shades of guilty. They were really going to have to work on his poker face.

The waiter narrowed his eyes at them disapprovingly. “Gentlemen,” he said icily, “I do have to inform you that neither physical altercations nor smoking are allowed within the palace grounds.”

“Huh?” John said. The man just gave McKay’s furtively concealed hands a dirty look before opening the door and going in.

“Oh,” McKay said, taking his hands from behind his back again. “That’s a stroke of luck, then.”

“Where did you even get that?” John demanded, gesturing at the gun.

“I... kind of stole it from one of the guards,” McKay said. “For what it’s worth, I doubt he’s noticed yet, I replaced it with a duplication spell. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’ve been worse,” John said, looking at the door Teyla had disappeared out of. He felt a little like he’d just been rolled over by a tank. “And I think we might have a new friend. One who believes the wraith are back.”

“Of _course_ you’d sneak off into abandoned hallways with strange women and get us a potential ally,” McKay said wearily. “Silly of me to worry, really.”

“Well, it’s still good to know you’ve got my back,” John said, patting his shoulder and touching the fresh bruise on his jaw with a wince.

“Because you so obviously needed rescuing from that beautiful woman who had you in her clutches.”

“Hey, she started off by beating me up, it’s not as though it was a social call.”

“Some men are into that,” McKay remarked philosophically, but the line of his shoulders had slumped back down into something like relaxation. His suit jacket fit him badly, too tight around the middle and over the shoulders in a way that suggested it had been bought for some big occasion years ago and had only rarely been taken off the hanger since.

“Yeah, well, I’m certainly not going to make a habit of it.”

McKay pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to John. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“Thanks,” John said, taking the handkerchief and holding it against his nose.

“We should probably get back in there,” McKay said, cracking the door open slightly and peering in. “People are sitting down.”

They found two empty chairs next to each other at the very back of the room, just in the nick of time since the lights dimmed right after that.

At the other end of the room a white canvas rolled down from the ceiling. For a moment it hung there uneventfully, but then color started spreading out from the middle of it like spilled ink, darkening and solidifying into an image of...

McKay put his head on one side. “Is projecting the queen’s face upside down a case of lèse-majesté, do you think?” he whispered to John.

“Doctor Lee?” came Doctor Weir’s voice from somewhere in the crowd. “Would it be too much to ask for the presentation to be the right way up?”

Bill Lee scuttered up to the canvas, lab coat tails flying. “So sorry, I thought we’d fixed that, excuse me, miss, would you hand me that - thank you.”

He touched the end of an ornate wooden staff to the middle of the canvas, made a quick spiral with it and stepped back. The image flipped over.

“Again, so sorry about that, won’t happen again,” Bill Lee said, handing the staff over to Sam Carter, who was standing to the side. She pressed her lips together in a smile and put it down on the table next to her before coming to stand in front of the canvas.

“So,” she said. “I’m not going to beat around the bush here. We all know what the main attraction tonight is going to be, so let’s get to it.”  

She turned to the canvas and snapped her fingers. The picture changed, morphing into a map.

“Found in the hills of Doranda,” Sam Carter said, pointing towards an innocently green and unremarkable patch of the map. “It was exposed during an earthquake a couple of months ago. That in itself was rather strange, because this area is not really a hotspot for seismic activity. We still don’t have a wholly convincing explanation for that, but it is possible that the facility was in fact programmed to unearth itself after a certain period of time.”

A buzz of excited whispers went through the room.

“We believe it’s an experimental Ancient technology designed to create a new power source. Of course I’m not authorized to give out details, but it might have been intended to power a weapon - though it doesn’t look like it was ever finished to the point where they could test it. It’s very likely the most recent Ancient technology we know about, so it’s not unthinkable that it was one of their last projects.”

McKay shuddered a little beside him. “Why does it feel like someone just walked over my grave?” he mumbled, sliding down in his chair.

“There has already been a discussion about whether or not we should be using this technology in the war effort. Personally,” Carter said, a sliver of hesitance on her face before she went on, “I don’t think we should. We just don’t know enough about it yet; it could have consequences far beyond what we are able to predict. The final decision is up to the counsel, of course.”

A row of heavily adorned, well-fed men and women looked pleased with themselves.

“There will be further discussion on that subject later, I am sure. For now all we can say for certain is that we are still investigating it, and that it could potentially illuminate much about the Ancients’ knowledge, regardless of whether we put it to use or not.” She smiled slightly. “Sorry to be so vague about it, but I’m sure you can understand why it’s necessary. Now, for something that will hopefully be a little more enlightening, please welcome our second speaker of the night - Doctor Ladon Radim,” She made room for a small, slight man in a neat but tired suit to take the stage.

“Thank you, Sam,” Ladon said. John couldn’t decide whether his perpetual half-smile was supposed to be self-deprecating or overbearing. “I am actually happy that you got the first turn, because this segues very nicely into what I’m here to talk about - learning from the past. Well, as many of you may know, I’m not from around here.” There was a small chuckle from the crowd. “I grew up and received my education in a Genii colony. This has given me a unique perspective on how totalitarianism and corruption have been rotting the Genii empire from the inside out, but also how it came to be such a powerful nation in the first place. The one thing I think is valuable to adopt from them is their tendency to look to the past. Their search to understand and emulate the Ancestors is what has facilitated the rise of such an extensive empire, especially when it comes to taking advantage of a combination of magic and technology.”    

The image on the canvas behind him swirled into a new one - stone inscriptions written in sharp, angular letters that John was pretty sure he’d seen before. McKay made a small noise of interest beside him.

“I have, this last year, had the privilege of going through the work of the late Dr Daniel Jackson, and it has made me think that there are some old conventions we should shed ourselves of. Among those is the notion that the Ancients were god-like beings, incapable of any error. If there’s one thing we can ascertain from studying the remnants of their culture, it is that they were not without faults. In fact they seem remarkably like us, if of course vastly more technologically advanced. They had their vices, their graces, their petty rivalries. Perhaps we can finally open our eyes to our inheritance if we let the illusions fall and see them for what they really were.”  

He looked out at his audience quietly for a moment, his slate gray eyes peculiarly solemn.  

“The Ancients, the demon families - even the golems, which we know very little of today but which were apparently creatures shaped and given life by the Ancients, only to rebel against their creators - the past is catching up with us, ladies and gentlemen. The things the Ancestors tried to bury are resurfacing. Whatever it is we have found in Doranda is just more proof of that. The question is whether we’ll have the wisdom and courage to handle what we’re given. Thank you,” he added modestly when another round of applause started up. “I look forward to the discussions we will undoubtedly have these next few days.”

He gathered up his papers and went back to his seat.

The next person to take the stand was a woman who kept dropping the papers she’d brought with her and started hiccuping nervously almost immediately upon embarking on an explanation of how the new warship model had multiple improvements from the, um, ah, older models, which was not to say that _hic_ the older models weren’t still perfectly _hic_ fit for use in the field, especially since the production of the new model would not be sufficient to _hic_ completely replace the old line for years to come and far be it from _her_ to suggest _hic_ that the faults, uh, well, not faults, uh, more like less streamlined operating systems of the old models would _hic_ prove a problem to...

When someone finally said: “Thank you, Dr Novak, that was very... enlightening,” John had already zoned out enough that the clapping made him startle a little. Sadly things didn’t get much more exciting from there on - by the time the ninth speaker accepted his lackluster applause, John knew more about the troubles around the national budget than any man with an aversion to ties and briefcases ever should. Even McKay had stopped making whispered comments to John about the abysmal quality of the fact checking, logic and overall scientific integrity on display and had slumped further and further into his seat as the minutes passed.

“If this doesn’t end soon,” McKay muttered from his now almost-horizontal position in the chair, “I am going to stab someone with a chicken skewer.”

Thankfully the next speaker turned out to be the last, and there was a brief period of chaos as everyone in the audience stood up and stretched their legs. For a while John lost sight of McKay, until he spotted him again by the buffet table, where another guy was engaging him in a somewhat one-sided discussion.

“You see, for the longest time they thought the tomato was poisonous,” the man said, waving expansively with his canapé.

“Why are you telling me this?” Rodney said, side-eying the man so hard it was a wonder his eyeballs didn’t pop out.

John grinned to himself and swerved out of the way of a bald, harassed-looking man who hurried through the crowd, medal-covered uniform chest glittering in the candle light.

For a while John passed the time people watching. After a while he noticed a definite pattern in the crowd. He tapped the cufflink once.

“Hey, McKay?” he said.

“ _Hm?_ ”

“How come there’s only me and what, three other sorcerers here?”

There was a pause on the other end. “Because the rest of them are out in the field? Why do you think they’re so keen on hiring you? Even the non-combat approved sorcerers above grade two are being sent out these days, to maintain the wards on the cities, setting up camps, making sure cursed objects don’t fall into our hands, that sort of thing.”

“So everyone present here... ” John said, swiping his gaze over his fellow magic-wielders.

“Would be anyone considered too fragile to withstand a gentle prod, yes. Notice that the average age is a vital two hundred plus.”

“So essentially it’s wizard season and I’m wearing a great big ‘shoot me’ sign on my back.”

“Just play hard to get,” McKay advised sagely. “They’re not going to expect you to accept any offers right away, this is just their way of establishing contact.”

“Good to know,” John said. “I’ll make sure to tell them I don’t put out on the first - oof.”

Someone crashed into his side, causing John to spill wine all down the front of his shirt.

“Shit,” a man’s voice said, “so sorry, didn’t mean to - ”

John turned around to say that it wasn’t a big deal, really, he didn’t like this shirt anyway, and then froze to the spot when he saw the face.

“Hi - sorry ‘bout that, didn’t see you there,” the man said, and John’s heart jolted in his chest - or, well, presumably it did wherever the city had it tucked away right now. A pair of horribly familiar brown eyes focused on him.

“I -”

“Here, let me get that,” said General Jack O’Neill, grabbing a handful of napkins from a table and reaching down to wipe the front of John’s shirt. Before he could make contact John had jerked back instinctively, his body winding up like a coiled spring.

“Whoa,” O’Neill said, holding up his hands. “Take it easy, not gonna stab you here.”

John got hold of himself and shook his head. “Yeah, sorry, just a bit... jumpy. Not used to big crowds.”

O’Neill shrugged. “Fair enough,” he said, offering the napkins. “I get a bit like that when I’ve stayed at the cottage too long, don’t worry about it.”

“Thank you,” John said, wiping down his shirt with fingers that fortunately didn’t show the tremor he was feeling.

“So,” O’Neill said, putting his hands in his pockets. “You’re the new sorcerer everybody’s talking about. I’ve heard about you.”

“Nothing but good things, I hope,” John said.

“Interesting things, certainly. Though you guys are practically required by law to spread ridiculous rumours about yourself, right? No one made themselves a reputation by saying they were steady workers and good at herbs.”

“I’d tell you,” John said, “but then... I’d have to come up with a new unlikely story, and I’m not the creative type.”  

O’Neill looked at him hard for a second, then snorted slightly with laughter. “Right. So tell me, how is the wizard gig these days? I imagine you must get job offers thrown at you wherever you go.”   

O’Neill was holding the end of a leash, and in the other end of it was the tiny dog that had followed John before. The dog looked up at John with half lidded eyes that seemed uncomfortably... human. Uncomfortably knowing, come to that. He gave it a small smile, just in case. “Not as many as you’d think. I’m still pretty new around here.”

“So we’re the first people to approach you, then,” O’Neill said disbelievingly.

John shrugged. “I’ve got some offers pending. I’m weighing my options.”

“Yeah, see, we could potentially offer you a lot more than - yes, Teal’c, what is it?”

A dark-skinned man with a bald head had walked up beside O’Neill and was currently looming over him. O’Neill was not a small man, but this guy made him look like a shrimp.

“O’Neill,” the big guy said, “Samantha Carter has asked us to join her at once. General Hammond wishes to speak with us.”

“Right. Well then, Mr Wizard, it was nice talking to you. Just remember that if you ever get into trouble, you’re going to be a lot better off if you’ve got some friends in high places.”

“Never been very good at climbing, sir,” John said.

O’Neill’s deadpan only cracked a little, the corner of his mouth pulling up minutely. “I don’t even know why they send me out for the recruitment speeches, honestly. Just... do yourself a favor and think about it. There might be times when some extra backup doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. We’ll be seeing you.” Then, to the dog: “Okay, Daniel, let’s get going. Hammond needs us.”

The dog gave an unenthused woff but followed O’Neill as he walked away. John stared until O’Neill’s back was safely out of view, lightheaded and queasy.  

After some time his radio gave a crackle - John wasn’t quite sure just how long it had been, but suddenly McKay’s voice sliced through his thoughts.

“Sheppard, are you still there?”

“Uh-huh,” John said.

“Seems like some people are starting to leave. You could bail now if you’d like, and we’ll meet up somewhere else before we go and see your... new friend.”

“Yeah, probably a good idea,” John said.

“Right. I’ll try to get out of here within a couple of hours, so just... find a cafe to sit at or something in the meantime.”

John had almost gotten to the exit when a voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Excuse me, sir,” Ladon Radim said, clasping his hands behind his back. “Would you be the wizard Mer?”

“Yeah. Mr Radim, was it?”

Ladon smiled his maybe-self effacing, maybe-mocking little smile. Something about him rubbed John the wrong way, from his well-combed hair to his worn but carefully maintained boots. He brought to mind a better class of rodent. “Just call me Ladon, everybody does. I just wanted to ask you, as a sorcerer, what you thought about the subjects raised today? These are tumultuous times for the magic-using population, after all. If we can successfully integrate magic and technology it would end the monopoly of your trade.”

John’s head was buzzing like radio static; he didn’t have the focus for this. “I suppose every step of progress should be taken as a good thing,” he said. “If that means people won’t have to pay for overpriced spells to keep their pipes from bursting during the winter, I guess that’s just a thing we’ll have to deal with.”

Ladon raised both eyebrows. “How very progressive. I’m impressed.”

“I’ve found that the future’s going to come to you whether you’ve invited it or not, so you might as well keep the door open. Excuse me, I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

“Ah, of course, I’m sorry to have held you up.” John felt... studied, like Ladon was trying to peel back his face to see underneath.  

“No problem.”

John got his coat back from someone wearing bright red and gold tassels, and from there it felt like a veritable labyrinth of plush carpets and polite faces and dark shadows until the main doors opened and let in cold evening air. The wind felt like cobwebs against his skin.  

Seeing the courtyard from the top of the stairs made John realize that the cobblestones were laid out in a very specific pattern - there were lines of lighter stone running like veins, coming together in big swooping shapes. It was one enormous magic circle encompassing the entire palace.

“‘S for dampening the magical field inside it,” the female guard who’d seen him in said helpfully, noticing John looking. “Makes sure we don’t get any fine gentlemen like yourself with ideas of playing hopscotch through the line of succession.”

“ _Catherine_ ,” the male guard said wretchedly.

She just grinned broadly with teeth that looked like a row of tomb stones dragged right from a dentist’s darkest nightmares and took a long pull of her cigarette. “Have a good night, sir,” she said. “You look like you might need it.”

As he walked down the stairs John became aware of something that had been scraping against his consciousness for some time now, like a bow finally touching a violin string firmly enough to produce a tone. His chest felt weird, filled up with something as vast and as achingly empty as a gray storm sky.

He found a small, almost-empty cafe, just like McKay had suggested, and ordered a coffee he didn’t drink. The young woman behind the counter almost seemed shocked when the bell over the door tinkled, and didn’t comment on the untouched coffee.

After maybe an hour - or it could have been longer, John didn’t look at his watch but his coffee was stone cold - McKay’s voice finally appeared over the radio again, and John told him where the cafe was. When the bell rang the second time, the girl behind the counter actually jumped a little, staring at McKay like she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“What a... quaint place you’ve found here,” McKay said, eyeing the curtains that had gone yellow at the edges from cigarette smoke long gone. There was something soothingly familiar about the solid shape of him there, looking around as if feeling the need for a tetanus shot simply by being in the same room as the rusting cutlery laid out at a table, and John left his coffee and stood. “Are you ready to go?”

“Sure. You know where we’re going?”

“Found this in my breast pocket when I left the palace,” McKay said as the door closed behind them, waving a white cardboard card with neat, curving handwriting on it. “God knows how she managed that. It shouldn’t be too far from here, we could walk.”

The evening light washed gray over the streets as they walked, making everything seem pale and far away. John walked with his hands in his pockets and tried to keep his attention on the nice simple sensation of moving but it felt like pouring water into oil - the awareness just puddled at the surface, unable to touch.

Once he caught his reflection in a window, and for a second he thought it was someone else, that someone was following them, until he recognized the coat and shook himself out of it.

They were both quiet for most of the walk, but John noticed McKay glancing over at him now and then, with the lack of subtlety you can only achieve when you’re convinced you’re displaying the height of discretion.

“Are you okay?” McKay said finally, as they crossed the street and entered the right block.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” John said. He wasn’t even lying; the adrenaline had died down and now he didn’t feel much of anything.

McKay gave him an odd look, but he just said: “I think it’s down here, come on.”

 

\-------

 

The address Teyla had given them turned out to be an inn of sorts. It was a squat but neat building squashed in between two larger ones, the thatched roof new and fresh even if this wasn’t a particularly reputable neighborhood.

“It says to go around and use the back entrance,” McKay said, scanning the note with an unconvinced expression. “It surprises me that she didn’t include a code to knock, too.”

“Can’t blame her for wanting to be careful these days,” John said, as they rounded the corner. He stepped up to the door and brought the knocker down hard a couple of times.

McKay looked a bit more comfortable now, having stuffed his tie into his pocket and opened the top buttons of his shirt. The small amount of chest hair that showed was lighter than his hair color; John seemed to remember from the photographs in McKay’s room that his hair had been almost blond when he was younger.

As they waited for the door to be open John noticed a weird bulge under McKay’s jacket, so he reached out and lifted the tail of it. The gun from before was tucked into the waistband of his pants. “For god,’s sake, McKay, you didn’t put it _back_?”

“We don’t really know who we’re dealing with here,” McKay hissed, forcefully smoothing down his front. “For all we know we could be walking into a trap! Excuse me for not sharing your sunny, trusting disposition on this particular -”

John sighed deeply. “Just... just give it to me.”

“Hm?”

“If anyone’s going to have it, it might as well be someone who knows how to use it.”

“...point.” McKay handed it over surprisingly willingly, holding it with only the tips of his fingers as if it were a dead rat.

“If you want you we could take some time one day to get you used to it,” John offered, checking the safety and then quickly sliding the gun under his coat as steps sounded from inside.

Teyla Emmagan opened the door, looking smaller out of the formal dress she’d been in at the meeting. Now she was wearing simple, sturdy clothes, like she was preparing for travel.

“It is good to see you,” she said, stepping aside. “Come in.”

She lead them into a room that seemed to cover most of the ground floor. Rough but well-made furniture stood unoccupied on the spotless wood floors, and a menu hung above the bar at one end of the room. The only other person in there was a dark young man standing behind the bar, stacking glasses and putting them away. He smiled bashfully at them and nodded a greeting.  

Teyla took them to a table in a corner, next to an empty fireplace. She gestured for them to sit down.

“The owner of this establishment is a friend of mine,” Teyla said, briefly glancing over at the young man behind the bar. “We can speak freely here.”

The silence stretched out before McKay broke it. “So, uh, Miss Emmagan -”

“Please, just call me Teyla,” she said.

“Right,” McKay said, making no effort to hide his distrust. “Teyla. What exactly was it you wanted to talk to us about?”

“I understand that at least one of you has encountered the wraith in recent times.” Her solemn dark gaze flicked between them.

“I suppose that’s a way to put it,” John said.

Teyla reached out for a cup of tea that had already been standing on the table and picked it up. “I asked around about you,” she told John calmly. “You are a wanted man. They said you killed someone.”

 _Several someones, through the years_ , John thought, _they just don’t seem to count,_ but he _said_ : “I know you’ve probably heard this one before, but... I was set up.”

McKay had tensed up beside him, his breathing quickening a little.

“I do know you did not do it,” Teyla said, unperturbed by McKay’s uneasiness. “From what my sources say the SGC have their doubts too - they have found... strange evidence on the scene of the crime.”

“Such as?”

“An unknown black substance with much the same composition as human blood, fibers from a SGC uniform jacket... General O’Neill’s fingerprints.”

“Oh.”

“It is not enough for them to publicly acquit you, of course, but they are - let us say, accustomed to not dismiss the unusual and the bizarre out of hand. They do not know what it is they have found, but they are suspicious.”

“And that’s enough to make you believe I didn’t do it?” John said, indulging in a little bit of suspicion of his own.

She quirked a tiny smile. “I know the color of wraith blood, Major Sheppard. And that spell in your chest is very fresh, less than a month old - around the time the crime happened. What I do not understand is why the wraith would be interested in the base in Antarctica.”

“Without breaking too many non-disclosure agreements,” McKay said, “let’s just say that there’s more to the SGC’s operations there than what meets the eye. They’ve got bigger fish to fry than looking at the pretty colors of the southern lights.”

“I see. And what is your role in all of this, mister...” She lifted her eyebrows inquisitively in McKay’s direction.

“Doctor. Twice over, in fact. Doctor Rodney McKay. And let’s just say for now that I’m an... interested party.”

“Interested in what, exactly?”

McKay’s face settled into the well-worn groove of impending sarcasm. “Oh, I don’t know, making sure everyone and their grandmothers don’t end up on a wraith barbeque - ”

“I think that we can all agree that people-eating monsters are bad news,” John interrupted, before their extremely fresh opportunity for cooperation shipwrecked itself against the great reef of McKay’s lack of social graces. Teyla blinked slowly a couple of times and then nodded, gamely enough.

“I’m also a scientist with the means - not to mention genius-level intellect - to actually register the return of the wraith, so I guess that gives me a kind of responsibility. I don’t know how long you guys have known about them, but...”

“For a very long time my people did not believe in the demons any more than the rest of the world,” Teyla said. “Even my great grandfather had only heard of them as monsters in stories, boogey men to keep the children from wandering too far from camp. Then, during my father’s lifetime, the stories... were no longer just stories.”

She reached out and turned her tea cup around on the tabletop, looking fixedly at the swirling liquid. Out of the corner of his eye, John noticed the young man behind the bar falter in his movements.

“We do not often observe them directly, though some of us have the ability to sense them when they are near. Mostly... children go missing,” Teyla said quietly. “Taken from their beds, or they go out to hunt or play and never come back. These days we dare not let them out of our sight, and still it happens sometimes, in the night. I have tried to present our case to the court many times, but they will not believe that the wraith have awakened. They only tell me we should not live so close to the Waste, even as we have nowhere else to go. That if we can not keep our children safe they will have to be taken into the government’s care and reeducated into... normal society. People are starting to take the chance of exploitation and poverty in the cities rather than live in fear at home.”

The young man behind the bar put down the glass he’d been holding with a clink that sounded loud in the silence.

“Wow,” John said. “I’m sorry, that... sucks.”  

“I no longer know what to do,” Teyla said, glancing up. “I am the leader of my people and they look to me for protection, and I do not know where to turn. The Genii despise us for refusing to join their side, and the empire only wishes us to cause them as little trouble as possible. The other tribes in those parts either have enough to deal with on their own, or they are too afraid of the government’s reactions to speak up. If I could only find _proof_ , if I could only once and for all bring them face to face with the reality of it, make them understand that they, too, will be affected sooner or later...”

John looked over and met Rodney’s eyes. After a minute of silence he said: “We... might be able to help.”

She glanced between them sharply, nostrils flaring a little. “How?”

Not breaking John’s gaze, McKay said: “We might be able to help you produce some... irrefutable evidence.” He looked over at Teyla. “How technically advanced are your people?”

“We have a great deal of knowledge, but to avoid bringing attention to ourselves very little of it is put into practice,” Teyla said. “Though we do have many accomplished sorcerers among our numbers. Why?”

“Just figuring out just how detailed we can get away with being.” McKay licked his lips absently, his eyes glazed over in that way that said he was thinking at breakneck speed.

“That...” She looked torn between disbelief and hope.

“I told you, certified genius,” McKay said airily, apparently as some sort of automatic response since he was still deep in thought. “I mean you’d have to give me a week or so to figure out exactly how to present it, but...”   

There was a tinkle of glass. When they turned to look the young man was clutching at his hand, a few broken glasses littering the floor.

Teyla half stood up. “Kanaan,” she said, “should I -”

“It is nothing,” he said, shaking his hand with a pained expression that somewhat belied his reassurance. “Teyla, please, may I have a word with you? In _private_ ,” he added, tipping his head towards the door that presumably lead into the kitchen.

“I... certainly. Excuse me for a second.”

She followed him into the kitchen and the door shut behind them. John answered McKay’s discomfited grimace as a whispered but clearly heated conversation started up in there. Bits and pieces of it were clear, but it was too scattered to make much sense to John.

“You do not even know... _wraith worshippers_ ,” Kanaan’s voice said at one point.

Teyla’s answer was too low to make out, but it sounded pretty definite.

“Halling would not... ”

“We have tried Halling’s way, and...”

McKay started twiddling his thumbs with an edge of frenzied second hand embarrassment.

“You _left_ ,” Teyla suddenly hissed, loud enough that it was clearly audible through the door. “When you made that choice, any right you had to question my decisions ended. You do not even know what conditions are like at home anymore.”

There was a long silence, and the next time Kanaan spoke it sounded soft and contrite. After half a minute the door swung back open and Teyla came out. Her look was quietly steely.

“Uh,” McKay said.  

“It is nothing. If your offer still stands, I am willing to take it. Kanaan here, though,” she said, still not looking at him, “has some questions about your involvement.”

Kanaan stood with his arms folded defiantly across his chest. It didn’t seem to be a move that came naturally to him -  it gave John associations of a sheep standing up to a wolverine to finally give it a piece of its mind. He withstood the withering silence Teyla extended in his direction, though, which was the mark of a braver man than John suspected he himself was.

“Excuse me for not believing you would do this out of the goodness of your hearts,” he said. “What do you two get out of it?”

“Uh, we, along with the rest of the known world, don’t get eaten or enslaved when the demons rise against us?” McKay said incredulously. “What the hell do you think we get out of it? Saving humanity isn’t motivation enough? And not to be insensitive -” John braced himself for whatever could follow such a statement, “but I highly doubt that anything you guys could scrounge up would be adequate payment anyway.”  

“Unless you’ve got a couple of spare ZPMs lying about, of course,” John said offhandedly, intending to lighten the mood. Teyla’s forehead creased.

“A... ZPM?”

“It was a joke,” John hurried to say, at the same time as McKay said: “It’s a kind of power source, very rare, not really - ”

“Ah,” Teyla said, expression clearing, “you mean the crystals the Ancestors used to power their machines?”

She grinned a little as they stared mutely. “I told you, my people’s limited use of technology is by choice, not ignorance. If a... ZPM is what you want in exchange for this favor, I am certain we should be able to procure one with an adequate amount of power left before the month is out.”

McKay made choking noises.

“Oh well,” John said, when it was clear that was about as coherent as McKay was prepared to be. “That’d be... that’d be great.”

“Dgah,” McKay agreed.

“So we have a deal?” Teyla said, reaching out her hand. McKay grabbed it like a drowning man.

“We have a deal,” he said faintly.

Teyla glanced at the clock on the wall and sighed. “I am sorry, but I have to go if I am to catch the last train tonight. I shall be back in the city in two weeks or so. I will contact you to let you know how our search for the power source is going.”

“Sounds like a plan,” John said, standing up when she did. McKay, still dumbstruck, was a bit behind, but he stumbled to his feet and followed them towards the door, mouthing “ZPM!” at John like all his prayers had been answered.    

Teyla nodded to the young man on her way out, softening a little around the edges. “Good night, Kanaan. Stay safe.”

“The same goes for you,” he said. He stood in the open doorway and watched them go, and John had strong doubts that it was him or McKay the guy was thinking about.

Teyla stopped at a street corner where they were going to have to part ways. “Thank you,” she said, her face sharp and strangely young in the glow of a street light.

“For what?” McKay said suspiciously. “We haven’t actually done anything yet. You don’t even know we can deliver on our promises. I mean, we _can_ , of course,” he added after John elbowed him gently between the ribs, “but you don’t know that. Ow.”

“I have faith in you, Dr McKay,” Teyla said pleasantly. “And if you cannot do what you promise to do... well, then I am no worse off than when I started and you do not get a ZPM. I do not have much to lose. You apparently do.”

“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” John said, and she pursed her lips against a smile.

“Take care. I will see you again soon.”

They watched her walk away.

“Did you crack a rib or something when you met our new Amazon Queen friend?” McKay said eventually.

“Huh?” John said, before he noticed he was rubbing his chest with his knuckles, just to the left of his breast bone. He stopped. “Yeah, I got pushed around a bit. Should we be making our way back?”

Rodney buried his hands in his pockets and blew out a long breath. His pointy nose was already pinkening in the chill night air. “Let’s.”

 

\-------

 

 

 

The desert rises sharp and bitter under the black sky. 

There are no stars.

The broken carcass of a helicopter lies in the sand, scorched parts strewn all over. A trail of red leads away from it; the violent brightness of arterial blood. He follows it into the desert. 

 

** John **

 

 

Pale skeletal shapes stretch against the sky, like beached whales that never got away. John walks between them, knowing that he’s wandering through someone else's’ tragedy. 

The red is hard to spot against the stone and sand and every now and then he has to stop to find it again. 

He can’t find Rodney anywhere.

 

 

** John **

 

 

Then, in the way of dreams, all at once and after an eternity, he reaches the right place.

The city is half-buried under the sand, lying there like a child’s broken spinning top. The windows are dead and dark, all except a stained glass window at ground level, the only bright thing here. Blood drips off the edge of it and stains ground. The blood has turned the sand dark and tacky, but there’s no way to get to the window without moving through it. It clings to John’s bare feet. 

John goes over to it and looks in. 

 

** John **

 

The wraith looks back at him, trapped behind the glass. “ _ John Sheppard. Have you changed your mind? Will you let me take your heart?” _

“I don’t have it anymore,” John says.

The wraith chuckles. “ _ Are you trying to make me jealous? Who did you find so worthy that you entrusted them with such a thing?” _

“Is it just me, or is that none of your fucking business?”

The smile falls away like the blade of a guillotine.  _ “Do not forget that I have a hold on you. I will still claim what is mine when your year is up - your life or your heart, it does not matter to me.” _

He makes a twisting gesture with his hand and John gasps and clutches at his chest, feeling the paper slip of the curse burning under his ribs. 

_ “Do you underst - aaah.” _

The wraith stumbles back a little, clutching at his head with a hiss of pain. It’s a silent scream through John’s mind, a high strung string of misery being struck. There’s desperation in that sound, and the sharp helpless frustration of captivity. 

“What happened to you?” John asks, narrowing his eyes against the horrible mental shriek. “Where  _ are  _ you - I  mean out there, in the real world?”

 

 

**John**

 

_ “I can see the future,”  _ is the only answer the wraith gives, his eyes too pale. All of him seems too pale all of a sudden, like the air is eating at him slowly and making him fade away. John doesn’t think the wraith is talking to him, or even to anyone in particular; this is the inward ramblings of madness.  _“Scorched as the desert outside… no water, no shade… my Queen, why - why do you now answer when I…”_

He shakes his head and comes into focus again, as if by tremendous effort. This time his smile is laced with something far more dangerous, balancing on the knife edge between sanity and the vast void beyond it. All of a sudden John is very glad there’s a barrier of glass between them.  _ “I can see the future,”  _ he repeats, as if it is the funniest thing in the world.  _ “Do you want to know what  I see? Do you want to know what is in store for you, John Sheppard?” _

“Not particularly,” John says.  

 

** John **

 

_ “Ah, but I have no choice in the matter. And neither will you.”  _

John puts his hand on the glass, which is without temperature or texture under his palm. The wraith steps aside with a flourish and there’s a body on the floor, lying face down in a pool of blood. John’s breath is too loud in his ears. 

“Who…” he says. Everything is so cold. He realizes he has a gun in his right hand.

The wraith only smiles, edging a boot under the body and flipping it over - 

and it’s Sumner, it’s Holland, it’s R -

 

** John! **

 

His lungs burned, his throat too tight to take in air; he was still shaking all over from the effort of pulling himself out of the slick oil pit of sleep and back into reality.

_John, it’s okay, you’re okay, I’m right here._

The city’s voice reached him in bits and pieces at first, just mental noise until it broke through and made sense.

“What,” he started to say, except the blankets felt like they were twisting around him and pulling him down, like seaweed keeping a drowning man just under the surface, inches from breathing the air, and he fought to disentangle himself and get off the bed, finally ended up sitting with his back against the chill metal wall beside his cot. He put his face in his hand for a second, feeling the cold sweat sticky against his fingers.

The city was making low soothing… well, not sounds, but small waves of comfort moving through his head. The lights turned up a little, the warm yellow glow of the glass painting giving everything a tinge of dawn.

“What,” John tried again, “what the hell was that?”

 _it was just a nightmare, John._ The city sounded out of sorts, like it had been given a crying baby and had no idea what to do with it. _I tried to wake you up, but you were really deep this time._

With the lights on and the metal of the city cooling his skin it seemed so obvious - of course it had been a nightmare. He scrubbed at his face with his hand as his breathing settled back down, feeling sick and slightly stupid.

“I don’t usually…” His voice was croaky and clumsy; he tried again: “I don’t usually have bad dreams.”

It was something that had always puzzled him, in an absent sort of way - most of the people he’d fought with over the years had had some kind of trouble with sleep. Either they didn’t get any, blanketed by insomnia until they could hardly see straight, or they had nightmares, or they felt like they could never get enough of it once they came home. The things John dreamt about were usually bland, neither particularly scary or pleasant.

 _you’ve changed things,_ the city said quietly, and John thought about the golden glow climbing up through his arms, through his veins and into his chest. _sometimes that has unforeseen consequences._

“Right,” he said. “ _Shit_.”

_it’s probably because you stayed away so long today. it puts a strain on our connection._

“Remind me to never do that again.”

 _are you actually encouraging me to put you under house arrest?_ the city said, cautiously amused. _because I’m going to threaten with that every time you annoy me from now. remember, you brought this on yourself._

John let out a snort of laughter and rested his head back against the wall. He closed his eyes. “How long is it going to be like this?” he asked after a while.

The city was quiet for a long time. _I don’t know, John. some people live apart from their hearts for their entire lives. they still survive, one way or another._

There was a low, tentative sort of purring sound, and when John looked over Fred the salamander was peeking over the edge of his bowl, tiny snout resting on the stone.

“Sorry about that, buddy,” John said, only just remembering not to stroke the red-hot magical newt over its head. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Still jittery, John picked up Fred’s bowl and a couple of Rodney’s books - he wasn’t going to get more sleep tonight - and looked around. On a whim he took the blanket with him and sat with his back against the glass painting, the faint warmth of it making it feel like leaning against a sun-warmed wall. He wriggled into a more comfortable position and opened the book against his knees.

 _more light?_ the city said after a while.

“Yeah, thanks.”

The light brightened a little, as if making up for the dawn that wouldn’t reach the landscape outside the windows for weeks.

 


	8. In which John has a lot of revelations he doesn't know what to do with

 

There were no clocks in the city, at least none of the kind John was used to. The city always knew what time it was everywhere - John had spent a surprisingly entertaining afternoon throwing out places he’d been to all over the world and getting the city to tell him exactly what time it was there right now - and, if asked, it would project the face of a clock on a wall or write it out at the bottom of a screen.

Metaphorically, though, John was listening to the merciless tick of a clock punctuating every passing second. He suspected it was the countdown to the end of his sanity.

The lab they were sitting in had a reddish tint to its metal walls and two desks. McKay was sitting at one of them, as he had been for the last two-three hours, as communicative as a clam. John put his head down on the desk and poked at the paperweight McKay had left there. It was shaped like a cat and wiggled back and forth on its stand when John prodded at it. He spent some minutes doing that, until Rodney sat up straighter, tipped his head back and sighed. “What,” he said, turning his chair towards John, “are you doing?”

“I’m bored,” John said, pushing the paperweight and following it with his eyes.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I forgot to put up the mobile over your bed, didn’t I,” Rodney said scathingly. “Please say the word and I’ll throw you a ball of string to bat around.”  

“Well, you won’t let me _do_ anything,” John said, waving his hands. “Everytime I get too close to a computer terminal you have a nervous fit and whenever I even glance in the direction of one of your spell binding projects - ”

“There’s a reason I’ve put up great big ‘Do Not Touch’ signs next to those things, they could take your hands off!”

“What I’m saying is that if I don’t get to do _something_ very soon, I might very well hotwire a jumper and try my luck out on the ice sheets.”

McKay pulled in a sharp breath, his mouth forming around something John had no doubt would be cutting, and then he shut his mouth again. He rubbed at his eyes.

“Yeah, okay, I guess a break can’t hurt. I don’t know how much more I can actually do without a ZPM installed, anyway. For the last two days I’ve just been running through possible scenarios.”

“If doing something else would stop you sitting up all night to tell me how everything will end in overload and catastrophe, I will lock you out of all the terminals for the rest of the day right now,” the city said.

“Well, now that you mention it I _did_ find something interesting in one of the labs here the other day...” Rodney said slowly. John raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, okay. Come on, I’ll show you.”

 

\-------

 

The blue light from the screen flickered across Rodney’s absorbed face as his fingers flew over the buttons. A few icons on John’s display changed, showing the alterations Rodney had made to the infrastructure of his newest settlement - which, to John’s mind, was placed suspiciously close to the coal deposits that ran mostly on John’s side of the border.

“It’s like Ancient Monopoly on speed,” Rodney said dreamily.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” the city demanded. “You don’t even have any idea what these programs really _do_. For all you know you could get some poor people cursed.”

John moved his fortifications slightly closer to the border of Rodney’s country while the city was unwittingly providing a distraction. “Hey, relax, it’s just a game. Oy, Rodney, hands off my lumber yard.”

“What? I assure you, this is a peaceful trade mission.”

“I mean, you’ve been at this for three days. Don’t you have work you should be getting on with?” the city said. “ _Anything?_ ”

“That’s funny, because it looked an awful lot like incompetent espionage from here.”

“Oh, don’t even start with me, Sheppard, I have last night’s bean ordeal fresh in my mind. I came to you with the best of intentions.”

“I didn’t _need_ beans, I needed lumber.”

“That’s no excuse for sending the trading party back with a note saying ‘nice try punk’ pinned to my ambassador!”

“I have created a monster,” the city said flatly.

John hurriedly averted a village-wide wave of cholera by moving the latrines away from the well. “Hmmm?”

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” the city said, its eyes rolling meaningfully across the wall before disappearing.

The city didn’t come back for several hours - which was long enough for Rodney’s country to be approaching the invention of the steam engine with what John considered highly questionable swiftness - but when it did it took the direct route of letting its eyes appear right there on their screens instead of trying to get their attention again.

“Rodney,” it said. “I just got a message for you at the main terminals. It seemed urgent.”

“Uh... okay?” It took Rodney a second to return fully to the real world. “Just send it up here, then. Hm.” His forehead wrinkled.

“Something wrong?” John asked.

“The judge is out on that just yet, it’s just a note from the telegraph central that I’ve got several messages waiting there. Who even uses the telegraph anymore now that the Seven League Boot Network is up and running?” he added. “Anyway, just… Hang tight, I’ll be right back.”  

After a couple of hours Rodney returned, triumphantly waving a scrap of paper.

“Teyla’s trying to get in contact with us,” he announced, taking the gate room stairs two steps at a time and then having to catch his breath at the top before trotting over to the terminal.

“What’s the message?” John asked, leaning over Rodney’s shoulder to see what he was doing.

“Actually, it’s a gate address,” Rodney said, wrinkling his brow and pushing the buttons quickly. “I must say the Athosians have a better understanding of this than I credited them with; they’re not going to be able to travel physically through the gates, of course, but they know enough to send simple signals through. Okay, let’s see here…”

The gate wooshed open, and one screen lit up. McKay whistled under his breath. “That’s a crystal ball signal. Color me impressed. You can let it through,” he added to the city. The screen flickered and then showed an empty room with whitewashed walls.   

At first that seemed to be all there was to it, but after a few seconds a dark-haired head popped into view. A boy stared at them, wide-eyed,  before bolting away and off-screen, yelling excitedly.

“Teyla! Teyla, it turned on just as you said, you must come right now!”

They could just pick up Teyla’s response. “Thank you, Jinto. You were very helpful.”

“I will find Father and tell him! I have seen a crystal ball working, Mirt will be _so_ jealous!”

Teyla came into view, smiling and shaking her head. “I am sure he will,” she called over her shoulder, then turned to the screen. “I apologize for that. John, Dr. McKay. It is good to see you.”

“Did you get it?” Rodney demanded.

“He means ‘nice to see you, too’,” John said helpfully, giving a small wave.

“Well, of course. But more importantly -”  

“That is what I wanted to talk to you about, Dr. McKay. We have indeed found a - what did you call it? A ZPM? It is fully powered, as far as we can tell.”

Rodney covertly pinched the inside of his arm, winced, and then stared at Teyla with saucer eyes. “Seriously?”

“Please, do not get overly excited. I have some bad news. The group that found your ZPM reported in to us from a border town. We lost contact with them a few days ago. Today I found out that there have been massive attacks on the main transport networks outside the larger cities - sorcerers blocking off roads and crippling railways to cut off supply lines. A few of Sora’s people made it through before that, but the main group - finding them again might take... quite some time.”

“Meaning?” John said.

Rodney bit his lip and stared into thin air. “Seeing as she’d have to either wait for the whole mess to be exorcised or make the better part of the trip on foot through enemy territory... probably about a month and a half. Maybe more.”

“That fits with our estimations,” Teyla agreed.

The silence dragged out. “Right,” John said finally. “A month. We can do that, right? We’re not going to run out of steam in a month?”

“If we’re conservative with the resources it should be fine,” Rodney said, in a tone that suggested it wounded him to the very core to admit it.

“Maybe it’ll be best if I just think as little as possible, then,” the city said acidly. On the screen Teyla crinkled her brow and looked around for a third person; John shrugged apologetically at her. “It’s not as if I’ve got this huge untapped potential sitting around, twiddling its thumbs, being massively underused when it _could_ have been put to -”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Rodney said imploringly. “Just… please. I promise I’ll fix it, we just need that ZPM first.”

The city was startled into silence. “I’m sorry,” it said finally. “I’m sorry, it’s just… it’s getting old.”

“I promise,” Rodney repeated. He looked back at Teyla. “You’re sure your agent is going to be able to follow through?”

“Sora has never given me any reason to doubt her capabilities,” Teyla said. “She and her people are in a very similar position to us - they may be simple farmers, but she has spent her life staying out of the line of fire between the Genii and your empire. The area is familiar to her as well; I am confident that she will report in as soon as she is able.”

“Well, uh…” Rodney threw his hands up weakly. “Thanks for telling us, I guess?”

“I will try to keep you informed of our progress. Should you wish to contact me in the meantime, this line will stay open for the foreseeable future.”

“Take care,” John said, and Rodney said: “Yeah, what he said.”.

When Teyla disappeared from the screen the silence seemed thick enough to cut with a knife.

“So,” John said, leaning against the wall and folding his arms. “We’re settling in for the long haul, then?”

“Seems that way,” Rodney said.

“...better stock up on instant noodles.”

Rodney laughed a little, running his hands over his face. “Yeah.”

“Like hell,” the city said. “You’ll both succumb to malnourishment and scurvy, and then where would I be. Abandoned. Minionless. I mean. All alone. You’re buying all the cabbage and carrots you can carry.”  

 

\-------

 

The next few weeks went by uneventfully enough. They kept playing the game Rodney had found, poked around in some of the rooms they hadn’t explored before and, after the city harangued them into submission, tried out some new recipes that might contain more than the incidental vitamine. Neither of them was going to go down in culinary history or anything, but there was contentment in chopping vegetables and squabbling about who the coolest legendary sorcerer was while McKay followed the instructions with scrupulous precision.

John thought he could probably survive a couple of months of this.

One day, after McKay had gotten his now-familiar glassy look of scientific discovery in the middle of breakfast and hurried off to put it to the test, John sat down in his cot with one of McKay’s books again. This one was about the historical era following the fall of the Satedan empire and seemed somewhat outdated, if McKay’s editorializing in the margins was any indication. John thought the handwritten rants were the highlights, really. The topic was anything but uplifting in itself.

About two thirds in McKay had left a bookmark. John fished it out to discover it was actually an old photograph torn in two, showing a young woman with a square face and blond curly hair falling over her broad shoulders. She was grinning widely and holding up a university diploma, though she looked far too young to even have been let into a university. John wondered what the other half of the photo had been; there was a now-disembodied arm slung over her shoulders, and the brown sweater seemed familiar, but it was hard to say. On the back it said ‘Jeannie graduation’ in blocky handwriting.

“Hey, Sheppard,” McKay stuck his head in through the doorway, brows pinched. “Is the salamander with you?”

John glanced up, quickly sliding the photo back in between the pages. “Fred? No. I thought you said you’d need him in the lab today.”

“Yeah, I do, but I can’t find him anywhere.”

“Huh. He must be somewhere, he never goes very far.”

“I know. Could you come help me look for him?”

John pushed to his feet and put the book back with the rest of them. “So where d’you have him last?”

“This way,” Rodney said, trotting down the hall and to the lab where, judging from the general chaos, he’d set up his current main base. “I swear I only took my eyes off him for a second.”

They each started in on one side of the room, doing a thorough sweep that an archaeologist would be proud of. McKay didn’t do many things halfway.

“And I was so close to finishing that spell, too,” Rodney muttered as he peered into the waste bin. “Now I’ll have to start from scratch again.”

“Can’t you just put in the finishing touches until you get a hold of him? I could keep looking in the meantime.”

“Nah, it’ll be tainted by the city’s background magic by now. That’s why you use salamander blood in the first place,” Rodney said, lifting stuff on his desk and peeking under them. “It’s neutral and can absorb high quantities of magic without corrupting it, so it’s a perfect vessel to host and preserve spells in. Of course that also means you have to keep one around for a fresh supply, which can get challenging because, well.” He waved his hands at the room as if to illustrate the perils of reptilian unreliability. “They’re tiny stupid lizards who corrode metal and get lost in weird places.”

“I don’t know, Fred can be surprisingly smart if he thinks there’s a lump of coal in it for him.”

“You might just have a special newt whisperer thing, then, because he just gnaws on my fingers when I try to get him to do something.”

John snorted. “And you’re the one who’s supposed to have the magic touch.”

“You don’t necessarily have to have natural talent to use magic,” Rodney said. “Of course it does help to have a genetic and psychological predisposition to channel it, and pretty much all of the big players do, but for everyday stuff you could be as naturally magically adept as a log and still get something decent out of it. Though no sorcerer with an ounce of economic sense would tell you that, of course.”

“So you could teach me some?” John asked.

“What?” Rodney yelped, almost dropping a big stack of books on his foot.

“Don’t you think my cover as a wizard would be slightly more convincing if I actually knew some of that good old hocus pocus? I mean, nothing fancy, just a little bit of special effects to help things along.”

McKay made a face, but was broken off by the city.

“Never. Mind,” the city said. “I think I. FOUnd. Your lizard creature. I believe HE is currEntly - Wait. What happened to. My vOIce.”

Rodney looked at John in confusion. “Uh - are you okay?”

“I canNOt seem to. Properly. Control my voice modul. Ation systems,” the city said, in the tones  of an unenthused automaton. “Oh that is so. Weird.”

“Is that like... a digital hiccup?” John asked, exchanging looks with McKay again.

“No it is. Not. I have tracked the ANomaly to. This. Relay.” The screen in the corner lit up, showing a blueprint of the city with a lower section of the central tower marked out. “Please go and find. Out what is doING this. Because. It is frEAKing. Me out.”

When they reached the room the city had indicated, even John - whose tech savvy was more or less limited to ‘give it a good thump, try turning it on and off again, ask someone who knows about this shit’ - could see where the problem lay. The city’s sooty eyes glared accusingly at a small, ragged hole in one of the consoles,  where torn wires and something that looked like long silvery fibers were sticking out willy nilly. John glanced down into the hole.

“Well,” he said, “at least we found the salamander.”

“Get that. Bloody newt out of. My nervous sYStem.” The city probably intended it to be a bark, but it came out in the same flat and oddly enunciated tone as before. John swallowed back a laugh as he carefully fished an apparently very full and satisfied salamander out from between the mess of wires and tubes.  

“What the hell were you doing in there?” John asked, as Fred rolled over in his palm with a small burp that smelled like fried electrical wires.

“I wOnder about. That. Too,” the city said.

Rodney, who was kneeling in front of the console and studying it like you would a dying family pet, made a small noise.  

“What was. That Rodney.”

“On second thought I... _might_ have left him in here when I did diagnostics on the power distribution systems,” Rodney admitted timidly. “Because, you know, he gets so restless if he’s not allowed out of his bowl now and then, and then he makes that sad little whining sound and it kind of distracts me when I’m trying to... Sometimes I bring him with me. It may just be possible that I forgot when I had that breakthrough on rerouting the... hm.”

There was a long silence, and then: “Meredith Rodney. McKay,” the city said, “I swear. That if you. Don’t fIX. This. Right now I will. Give you such. A hard time. That you will. Never –“

“I’m working on it, okay?” Rodney said desperately, fingers flying over the panels.

“I mean. It. I will. Make sure you’ll. Never take a piss. Again. Without getting. Electro. ShOCKed.”

“Hey, I’m _sorry,_ okay? I didn’t know that was going to happen, we all make mistakes!”

“I know. Where you sleep,” the city declared darkly. “I know. Where your tools are. Kept. I know,” it continued, “in which. Directory you kEEP. Your pornographic –“

“Hey, hey, hey,” Rodney protested, waving his hands frantically. He shot an embarrassed glance at John, who had tried to keep himself out of the line of fire by staying completely quiet. This time he couldn’t suppress a choking noise, though.

The city’s glare swiveled around to him. “John. Sheppard are you. Laughing?”

“Noho-ho,” John managed.

“You disloyal. Little.”

John desperately bit his lip to keep from saying it, but then he met Rodney’s eyes and he was helpless.

“Hey,” he said, “we might never get this chance again - say ‘Die, puny humans’, would you?”

There was a pause. Then, with no inflection whatsoever, the city said: “Argh.”

John laughed until he had to lean on Rodney to keep upright. Fortunately Rodney did exactly the same thing only in the opposite direction, so by way of counter-balance they both at least kept to their feet.

“This. Is not. FUNny,” the city said.

“Argh,” Rodney said in a perfect deadpan, and that set John off again. He turned his face into Rodney’s shoulder to muffle the worst of it.

“I will put. Helium in your. Air sUPPly see. How you like. It. Stupid. CArbon based life. Forms.”

Rodney swept his sleeve over his eyes, pink in the face from laughing. “Sorry, sorry, it’s just... sorry.”

“You wILL be sorry. Shortly beliEVE me. ALso John you. Laugh like a don. Key.”

John’s mind rummaged through the last few minutes and hit on what had been niggling it. “ _Meredith_?” he said, turning his head on Rodney’s shoulder to look up at him.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rodney said.

 

\-------

 

It took McKay the better part of the day to fix the problem, and the city was still rather snippy afterwards, leading John and Rodney to decide over breakfast that perhaps this was the ideal time for some shooting lessons, out of its metaphorical hair.

The city had found them a hall down in the east pier that was big enough for their purposes - though it still muttered darkly about ricochets and tempting fate and not coming running to _it_ when it all ended in tears - and John and Rodney found a couple of crates to put the targets on.

“Well… how hard could it possibly be?” Rodney said, looking down their improvised shooting range with less confidence than his words would imply.

“Doesn’t take a Ph.D.,” John agreed.

Rodney triumphantly produced something that looked like slightly oversized earplugs from his pocket. “Hearing protection,” he said, handing two to John. “I fused it with the communication spell I used for the cufflinks before.”

“Cool,” John said, tentatively putting one in his ear. Immediately all noise hushed, as if a blanket of silence had been dropped on the world.. “You should patent this stuff, you know.”

“Well, I am a genius,” McKay said modestly. “If I patented everything I came up with, no one else would ever have a chance.”

John went over to the crates they’d stacked up at the other end of the room and set down the bottles they were using for targets. When he came back, Rodney was holding the gun away from his body as if it were a highly poisonous snake.

“Ready?” John asked.

“I, um, of course.”

John showed him some of the basic stuff, like how to operate the safety, how to hold it properly and, once he’d instinctively ducked out of the way, for the love of god, never rest your finger on the trigger unless you really intend to shoot something.

Things didn’t get a lot better once they got to the actual shooting part.

“McKay,” John said after a while, when the sixth bullet veered into a faraway corner without even tending in the right direction, “this would probably be a lot easier if you didn’t turn away every time you pull the trigger.”

“Well, it’s, it’s... it’s a _gun_ ,” McKay said wretchedly, looking down at it resting in his hand like it had betrayed him in some deep and fundamental way. “It’s a thing specifically made to _kill people._ And I keep thinking the recoil is going to make me punch myself in the face.”

“It’s okay. We’ll get you used to it.” Quite beside the open nervousness, McKay shot with the tight, tense frustration of someone who disliked not immediately excelling at something. That made sense - of all the weird shit they’d encountered lately, there hadn’t been anything McKay hadn’t been able to fix, admittedly after a panic attack or two. His brain obviously worked overtime compared to most other people; there was little wonder he didn’t like it when his body couldn’t keep up. “You wanna take a break?”

“No. I have to get it right.”

“Yeah, okay. Well, first of all you’ve got to change your stance. Stand properly on your feet, and... just... here.”

Looking bemused but cooperating readily enough, Rodney let John kick his feet slightly apart and twist his shoulders to a better position.

“Now, try there,” John said, hand trailing down Rodney’s back to steady him. The improvement could not be said to be staggering - McKay still screwed up his face like he expected the recoil to take his hand off every time he pulled the trigger - but at long last one of the bullets hit home with a marvellous shower of glass.  

“Hah!” Rodney said once the shock wore off. “Did you see that?”

“Sure did.”

“This isn’t as hard as I thought it would be,” Rodney said happily. “And to think people spend years learning this stuff.”

“Don’t go giving up your day job just yet, sharpshooter. Let’s try that again.”

As the rounds went on Rodney’s aim got less and less erratic - not overwhelmingly accurate, but more consistent, which was a start. He quickly corrected his posture whenever John touched his shoulder or tapped the side of his foot with a boot, and at the very least no one could accuse him of not giving it his full attention. From the way he stared intently at the targets you’d think he was performing long distance brain surgery.   

Finally, after a round where well over half of the shots hit home, Rodney stood back and wiped his forehead. “I’m getting the hang of this,” he said, beaming.

“Regular gunslinger,” John agreed dryly, and Rodney rolled his eyes but grinned. “And when the bottles rise up against us, I’ll know you’ve got my back.”   

A satisfied silence settled between them for a long moment. Rodney’s grin mellowed into a little lopsided smile.

“You know,” he said finally, “if you’d really like I could probably teach you some easy spells for -”

“Rodney?” The city blinked its eyes open on the far wall. “Oh, there you are. There’s a message for you. Again. I’d like to take the time to reiterate my point about how I’m not your post boy.”

“What kind of message?”

“I don’t know, it arrived at your personal account. It might be from the palace, I don’t know. I could send it down there, if you’d like,” the city said. “Treat the pinnacle technology of an ancient race as your personal mail service, why don’t you.”

“If you don’t feel it’s beneath you, _please do._ ”

Rodney picked up his nigh ever-present tablet and studied it, his brow furrowing deeper with each word he read. “Oh, for the love of…”

“Something wrong?” John said.

“No, no, no, it’s just work. I swear, I look away for _five_ minutes and Zelenka and the lab monkeys tear the fabric of the universe into quantum confetti. Sorry, I have to go out for a while,” Rodney said distractedly, glancing around for somewhere to put the now empty gun. John reached out a hand to take it and watched as McKay grabbed his jacket and headed for the door.

“This might take a while, so there’s no need to wait up or anything,” Rodney added over his shoulder.

“Do you want me to, you know. Help out with anything?” John asked, gesturing lamely with the gun.

“No, no, it’s no problem. Just stay here and keep the fort while I keep Radek Zelenka from ending the world, I’ll see you when I see you.”

And he went out the door and disappeared.

In his wake the hall seemed a lot bigger and a lot emptier. John shuffled his feet just to hear the sound of it. Everything was so quiet; he felt like the silence was bearing down on him like an avalanche.

_do you want me to make some coffee?_ the city said finally.

“No, it’s fine,” John said.

_I’m getting better at it. Rodney says he needs at least two cups of my coffee in the mornings now. before he took only a couple of sips, which would be a lot more efficient to my mind, but he seems happier now._

John tucked the gun into his belt and went out into the corridor.

He walked down the hallway, and then he just couldn’t _stop_. His feet took him down the next corridor, and the next, picking up speed as they went until it was either breaking out in a run or snap his ankles off. The silence still clung to his senses like silvery cobwebs - _John, what are you doing? -_ but it seemed more tolerable like this, with the air moving across his face and the rhythmical sound of his boots hitting the floor, a drum he could breathe to. He didn’t know how long it lasted, only that when the city broke the rhythm, it sounded terrified.

_John! please **stop!**_

It was remarkably hard to ask his legs to slow down and finally come to a stop. His breath was burning down his throat, and once the momentum wasn’t driving him along anymore he had to slump against the wall to keep upright. He had no idea where he was.

... _John._  

“I’m okay,” he gasped out. “I’m okay, it’s okay.”

_please sit down or something, you feel all… pale._

Without protest John let his legs collapse pitifully and sat down against the wall. Everything around him seemed pale and out of focus, like someone had put a milky film over his eyes. His breath took some time to settle down.

_you scared me_ , the city said.

“I know,” John said. “I’m sorry.”

_you put a lot of stress on your heart when you went to the capital. it’s nowhere near ready for this kind of punishment yet._

“I know.”

Only the still-rasping sound of his inhales broke the silence for a while. Then the city heaved a deep sigh.

_you always seem… less real, when you’re alone._

John’s throat felt like an insurmountable hindrance to all the things he should probably say to that. “You’re saying I’m faking it when he’s here.”

_I’m saying that sometimes, if you go long enough without a mirror, you’ll forget your own face. it’s not… it’s not that easy._

John leaned his forehead against his knees and closed his eyes. “This sucks,” he said finally. It was about as elaborate as he was prepared to be on the subject.

_...yeah, I know. I’m sorry._

“Listen,” John said, “I’ve been thinking, and maybe we should… maybe we should just tell him. About our deal. I have a feeling that ‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you’ doesn’t really apply here. What if… something happens and he doesn’t know...”

_well. maybe you’re right. let me find a way to break it to him gently, though. I need to make sure that… I’ll think it through, okay?_

“Right.” John looked around. Now that he was more or less sensate again he realized that he was in a part of the city he’d never seen before, and it was darker and colder than the other rooms he’d been to. “Where the hell is this, by the way?”

The city was quiet for a surprisingly long time. _I… don’t know, actually. odd. all the sensors and stuff are off in there, and I can’t get them back online.  if you weren’t there I wouldn’t be able to sense anything at all.  maybe I should get Rodney to look at it._

Goosebumps had already started breaking out on John’s bare arms. He shuddered and rubbed his overarms to get some warmth back, then pushed to his feet. “They certainly remembered to turn off the radiators in here before they left,” he muttered, folding his arms tightly across his chest. The city’s niggling worry butted gently against his brain, and he cleared his throat. “Um. If you were serious about the coffee before - ”

_I could totally make you some,_ the city said, relief making the words stumble into each other. _I could have it ready before you get to the kitchen, even, it would be no trouble. I practically_ am _a multitask._

“Thanks. Great. So, er, what way _would_ the kitchen be from here?”

There was a meaningful pause. _wow. Rodney really wasn’t kidding about your sense of direction._

“Hey!”

_just… go where I tell you, okay?_

 

\---

 

Rodney turned out to have been right about coming in late. At least fifteen hours went by until he stumbled back into the gate room, blinking in the low lights.

“Hey,” he said when he spotted John sitting back on the stairs, finishing up the history of the Satedan empire’s depressing collapse. “I said you didn’t have to wait up.”

“You’re right, I didn’t have to,” John said easily.

Rodney smiled his lopsided smile and sat down next to John, leaning his face and arms on the step above him. He looked a little like a turtle withdrawing into its shell to keep the cruel, confusing world at bay.

“Long day?” John said, trying not to laugh.

“Long day, long night, long day again. Could you even call this jet lag?” Rodney said into his folded arms. “Flitting between time zones like a demented hummingbird like this can’t be good for… anything, really.”

“I take it you don’t do jobs like that very often.”

“They don’t call me in anymore unless it’s a choice between letting the world end or contacting me,” Rodney said. “I suppose I didn’t make the best of impressions the last time.”

“You said that. What’s the story there?”

“Most of that’s classified, but in short I sort of, uh… sort of told Sam Carter she should leave her team mate to die because it was the sensible thing to do?”

“Ouch,” John said, making a face.

“To put it mildly. But it wasn’t - it’s weird,” he said.  “I _know_ I was right, back then. Factually, what she did was reckless and illogical and put a lot of lives in danger for one guy and it only worked because, you know, she’s _Samantha Carter._ But at the same time, I…” He hesitated, staring at John like he wanted to see something through him. “… maybe I was wrong, too, in a different way. I don’t know.”

“Wait, wait, let me troubleshoot my auditory processors - did you just admit that you might have been _wrong_ about something?” the city asked, mock-astonished. “Are you feeling well? Should I check your temperature?”

“Sort of wrong,” Rodney corrected. “From a certain point of view. A very emotionalist, unlikely point of view.”

“Riiiight,” John said. “You’re saying you _might_ have been wrong - from the wrong point of view. I can see how Carter would be elated to get an apology like that.”  

Rodney just smiled through a yawn and waved a hand at him. “You’re both such traitors,” he declared. “I’m trying my hand at character development here.”

John got up and offered his hand to Rodney, before they both started to doze off on the stairs. Rodney’s hand was really warm. “Never saw the point of that myself. Too much work.”

“Probably,” Rodney yawned, swaying on his feet when John let him go. “Bed. I’m going to bed now.”

“Good idea,” John said, feeling his own eyelids become heavy now that he wasn’t waiting anymore. Rodney stumbled off with what might have been a mumbled ‘See you tomorrow’, and when John finally got to lie down and get under the covers he fell asleep like someone had hit him over the back of the head with a brick. If he dreamed anything, it was gone by the time he woke up.

 

\-------

 

 

John told Rodney about the weird dead spot in the city, which set him off in full exploration mode. They had searched through a few rooms already, without any real method behind which ones they chose beyond Rodney’s notoriously fickle curiosity. John’s discovery had given them something more concrete to go on, though. Rodney looked it over one last time during breakfast, making interested and frustrated noises in turn.

“See here,” Rodney said between bites, pointing to his tablet. “There’s a whole cluster of rooms down there that don’t seem to be drawing _any_ power. Even the unused ones at least have some heat and sensors running at any given time, but these are just completely dead.”

“It was pretty damn cold down there,” John agreed.

Rodney frowned. “It doesn’t make any sense, though. There’s no damage to the power conduits in that area, but the city still can’t access it no matter what we try. It’s like the Ancients _really_ wanted to make sure they didn’t leave the stove on before they left.”

John twirled his empty mug in his fingers, sitting back in his chair and crossing his ankles under the small table - brushing Rodney’s shin because apparently the Ancients must have needed a lot less leg space than John did. “We’re going exploring, then.”

Rodney grinned and drained the last of his coffee.

 

\---

 

The hall was still freezing, and John shoved his hands deep into his pockets to keep them from turning into ice cubes. Rodney - who had again donned his amazingly orange jacket and a nice pink tinge to his cheeks and nose - walked next to him, looking more at his tablet than where they were going. Their breath left small clouds of steam in the chilly, long undisturbed air.

“You know, I’ve thought about it,” Rodney said after a while, his voice echoing hollowly between the walls, “and there might actually be another reason all the power is out here.”

“Yeah?”

“The Ancients weren’t above hiding their work from one another. Remember the stuff I found that lead me to the city in the first place? Nothing like that has ever been discovered before or after, which leads me to suspect that it was, well, encoded in a way that would stop other Ancients from reading it. What if this area,” he waved at the corridor, “also contains something someone didn’t want anybody else to find?”

John wrinkled his nose. “In here, right under the noses of everyone else? Seems kind of reckless.”

“Oh yes, because the more we get to know about these guys we see how they were defined by their prudence and strength of forethought.”

“Point.”

Rodney stopped with a jerk, tapping the edge of his tablet. “This is it, I think. Ground zero for the energy blockage.”

Upon inspection John could find nothing in the hallway that stood out. “Are you sure?”

“If I’ve got this right - which, heh - this piece of wall right here is engraved with a spell that lowers the density of the metal so much that…” Rodney pressed against the wall with his hand, and it went right through. “As I thought. See, the only reason I could find that was because it makes a very tiny disturbance in the magical field which would have been completely undetectable if there were other active energy sources here. Someone meant for this to be found only _after_ the city was abandoned. Let’s see, it feels like there’s a switch of some sort here…”

He stretched his arm out a little so he was elbow-deep in the wall, and when he twisted it the whole wall disappeared, revealing a nook in the wall that was filled with tray upon tray of crystals. They looked a little like glittery clusters of fungi growing out of the panels, glistening as if covered in some kind of slime - a bit too organic-looking for John’s comfort.

“What the hell is that?” he said.

“It’s… it might be… honestly, I have no idea,” Rodney said. “It’s magic though, I can tell you that much.”

“And here I thought we just had a really ambitious mould problem on our hands,” John said.

Rodney held the tablet up to the crystals and made dissatisfied sounds at whatever it told him.

John squinted at it. “Could it be a lock or something?”

“Your guess is as good as mine here. Hm… maybe we’d have to hit it with a spell in just the right place…” Rodney muttered to himself, sitting down and scowling at his tablet.

John stared hard at the wall for a long time. There was a thought swirling tantalizingly around in his brain, and just when he thought he’d pinned it down by the tail end it slipped away from him again.

“Oh, for the love of…” he said under his breath.

Rodney was still rambling to himself. “Okay, so maybe not that, might actually blow the whole place up, scratch that until further notice. What about a code or even… no, no that won’t…”

The thought clicked into place in John’s brain

“Hang on, hang on.” John looked it over again to be certain. “This part,” he said finally, pointing to the crystals in question. “It’s out of order.”

“Hm?” Rodney said, blatantly not paying attention.

“No, really,” John said, grabbing him by the shoulder, pulling him to his feet and tugging him in. “It’s just a logic puzzle. If you suppose that the colors and shapes stand for specific values between one and nine, and the way they’re arranged in clusters around this central piece tells us what operations to use on them, then this one -”

“Is the odd one out,” Rodney said, eyes moving quickly over the panel. “Yes, yes, yes, every other cluster adds up to fifteen, but this one is… forty two?”

“I think so,” John said.

“Interesting. So what happens if I do… this?” Rodney paused to think, then pulled out the offending crystals and reordered them, making the cluster add up to a nice and conforming fifteen.

They both looked expectantly at the wall - which made it all the more disappointing when nothing happened.

“Well, it was worth a try,” Rodney said, like someone who has unwrapped a Christmas present only to find three pairs of socks and some raisins. “Back to square one, then.”

John wasn’t prepared to give up just yet, though. “Hang on, let me try something… They’d want to make sure no one from outside the city could open it, right?”

“Since they tried to keep it hidden even from people _in_ the city… probably,” Rodney said. “Why, what are you thinking?”

“I wouldn’t call it thinking, I’ve just got a hunch.” John reached out his hand and rested it against the central tile.

Rodney took a sharp breath. “Yes, of course, the gene -”

With no fuss whatsoever the wall slid aside, revealing an open doorway into a new room.

“That,” Rodney said after a while, “was actually pretty clever.”

“I have my moments,” John drawled.

Rodney looked at him a few seconds too long. “Well, obviously.”

“Chalk it up as an unlikely fluke, if it lets you sleep easier.”  

“No, no, that’s… cool.” Rodney shook himself out of whatever strange reverie he’d gotten tangled up in. “Let’s see what we’ve found, shall we?”

The rooms inside were dark until John stepped over the threshold, but when the low blueish lights came on it fell on on benches and consoles and some strange, unidentifiable machinery that covered the entirety of one wall and gave the impression of being the work of a glass blower with a nasty hiccup. There were several other doorways, leading to murky spaces of their own.

Rodney stood close to John’s side and looked around curiously. “It’s… a lab?”

“That’s what it looks like,” John agreed, taking a few steps into the room and smelling the traces of something sharp and acrid in the air.

“Please don’t touch anything,” Rodney groaned. “Bad things happen when you start touching things.”

“Hey,” John protested. “I’ve only almost blown us up like… _once._ ” Rodney gave him a snippy look. “Okay, twice. But you fixed that.”

Rodney, not even dignifying that with a response, walked over to one of the consoles and gently brushed the thick layer of dust away. “Look, I realize the irony in this… but could you come over here and touch this thing?”

John did, putting his hand beside Rodney’s. Rodney had surprisingly callused hands for what you’d think was an indoor job with no heavy lifting. A faint scar ran over the back of the left hand - screwdriver slipping, probably. John had borne witness to some truly astounding reams of curses when he’d sliced his thumb open a couple of weeks ago. He hadn’t even known ‘fuck’ could have so many synonyms before.

The terminal lit up, a hatch opened and a silver dome rose up through it. Engravings so fine as to be almost unnoticeable covered the entire surface of the dome, strange intertwining symbols snaking across the metal as if drawn in one continuous line.

John looked over at Rodney, who nodded guardedly, and placed his hand on the dome.

Under his fingers the metal clicked, neat cracks opening from the middle outwards, red light shining up through them.

John pushed Rodney a little behind him and started backing away. In hindsight, he allowed to himself, this might not have been the best idea. It was a thought he seemed to have a lot these days. The light shifted from red to a clear strong blue - shit, maybe it was a bomb, whoever left this lab behind would probably be capable of rigging quite a booby trap - and they both tensed themselves for whatever was coming.

As it turned out the only thing that happened was that the dome started letting out music. It was an odd song - the better part of it was long, mournful tones, like whale song that inexplicably scratched up against John’s nerves, but whenever he didn’t listen for it he thought he heard something else, something more like voices raised in song. It slipped away into the other sounds when he tried to focus in on it.

“So we’ve found… what, an Ancient radio station or something?” John asked flatly, as Rodney’s hand relaxed from its death grip on his arm.

Rodney shrugged and tipped his head to one side as he listened. “Hm. That sounds strangely… familiar - hang on,” he said, eyes bulging. “I’ve heard this before! It’s - it’s the code! The one I solved to find the city. Music. Thing. From the potato soup place.”

“Yeah?”

“If so I already know how to decrypt it, let me just…” He spent a few minutes muttering to himself and scrolling on his tablet while John kept poking the dome to no avail. “Okay, so here…”

He put the tablet face up on the terminal, the polished black surface reflecting the blue light. For a while it did nothing - for one mad moment John was certain it was _listening_ to the melody - and then, slowly, tentatively, it let out tones of its own.

The first few minutes was a lot like having to listen to Nancy’s cousin Victor practicing on the violin while trying not to make too many insulting faces, but then the tablet hit on a harmony that was actually kind of… nice, in an eerie sort of way. As if emboldened it picked up another note, and then another, singing back a mirror song that rose until John’s head started hurting -

and then it stopped, the silence like a auditory punch to the head.

Still slightly dizzy, John watched as the dome unfolded in a soft, organic twist that metal had no business doing, a silver flower blooming open to reveal an interior chamber made of countless glass pieces. The glass lit up with the blue light again, and all at once it threw up a hologram that filled the whole room.

Rodney swore reverently beside him.

It reminded John of the magical planetarium his teachers had used to teach them celestial navigation - the same uncanny feeling of standing still while the universe spun around you, except that if this was an image of the night sky it wasn’t viewed from anywhere on this world. The lights that had to be representations of stars danced around over their heads, but John couldn’t find any familiar constellations, and there were other things - glowing blue circles that pulsed together in some invisible heartbeat, pale lines connecting different points, complicated geometrical figures - that didn’t translate into anything he knew.

“It kind of looks like a star map on steroids, doesn’t it?” Rodney said and ducked nervously away from a passing cluster of light. It hit his shoulder anyway, making a row of sweet  tinkling tunes on impact. Rodney drew in a sharp breath as the lights reshaped themselves, morphing into neat lines of symbols that looked undeniably like some sort of writing. “Hey, this is in Ancient.”

“Cool,” John said. “What’s it say?”

Rodney made a face and leaned over to get a better look. “My Ancient isn’t all that good, but this particular piece… hm, something about music, or a song, and that word means… either ‘corruption’ or ‘tadpole’, I’m not quite sure - that’s definitely some conjugation of ‘sleep’, though,” he said, pointing to a particular cluster of symbols. “And some of the usual stuff about stars and fire and eternity and whatnot. So… music something corruption slash tadpole, sleep something something fire stars - listen, I’m not a linguist, what you see is what you get here.”

“Hey, it’s not the view I’m complaining about. That was pretty useless, though.”

“I think, “Rodney scratched his head, “it’s a curse - or maybe a blessing, I can’t tell. Needless to say it’s entirely unlike anything seen in modern magic.”

“What about this part?” John asked, pointing to some of the writing which seemed more emphasised than the rest.

Rodney’s mouth moved along as he tried to sound out the words. “Ah, this is the youngest version of the language - should be easier to read. Hm.This part here would be… ‘the hand that reaches out and the song that reaches in’, something like that. And there’s there something about a… dark, I guess, or maybe _extinguished_ city, something like that.”

“ _This_ city?”

Rodney shrugged. “Maybe? Honestly, your guess is as good as mine here. This is one of the, like… three times in recorded history where Daniel Jackson would actually have been useful.”

“Well, I for one think the tadpole is going to be very central here.”

Rodney snickered and made a rude gesture in his direction.

John stood with his hands on his hips and stared appraisingly at the wall of unreadable text. “D’you think the city could make sense of this?”

“Huh. Maybe? Hey,” he said, giving the wall a sharp knock with his knuckles. “Could you help us out down here?”  

There was no answer.

“Huh,” Rodney said again. “I guess it really wasn’t kidding about everything being turned off in here. Let’s try this, then…”

He did something with his tablet and then the city’s tinny voice sounded from it. “What is it? Are you okay? Did one of you trip down a flight of stairs and crack your head open? Because to be honest I don’t think I’m programmed to perform brain surgery and you can’t just turn a human off and on again and I can’t even make a backup of your -”

“Uh,” John said, exchanging looks with Rodney, “no, no, we’re fine, don’t worry.”

“Well, that’s a relief. What did you want, then?”

“We thought maybe you could help us out with some translation stuff,” Rodney said. “There’s a few Ancient texts down here I’d like to make sense of.”

“And why would you think _I_ could help you with that?” the city said, with a surliness that made them both raise an eyebrow.

“...because of the three of us only you have even a remote connection to the Ancients?” Rodney ventured.

“Is there something about the concept of ‘I can’t remember a thing’ that eludes you?”

“Um, no, we just thought -”

“I guess you thought _wrong_ , then.”

“Whoa,” John mouthed, and Rodney nodded dazedly.

“Are you… are you still there?” the city said after a while.

Rodney cleared his throat. “Listen, I didn’t mean to upset you or anything,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking. If you don’t want to deal with -”

“I suppose I could take a look at it,” the city mumbled. “I’d be starting from scratch, though, I don’t come prepackaged with the Ancient alphabet song.”

“That would be great… thank you?” Rodney said uncertainly.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry,” the city sighed. “Could you just… None of the sensors in there are working. I don’t like it when I can’t see you. I worry.”

“Yes, mom,” they chorused.

“Also you’re both grounded,” the city said.

“We can’t really go outside without braving death and hypothermia anyway,” John reminded it.

“Nevertheless,” the city said, and John knew that they were mostly forgiven.

 

\-------

 

They did another sweep of the Waste the next day, which, to everyone’s surprise, turned out to be an uplifting experience. Rodney actually had to make sure the sensors were working properly three times before he was prepared to believe what they were saying.

“What do you _mean_ , the wraith activity has lowered significantly?”

“Do you want me to spell it out in binary for you?” the city said testily. It sounded far off and tinny from the jumper’s speakers - McKay hadn’t quite figured out how to get its signal to carry properly yet.

“But… but it doesn’t even make _sense_ , why would they take their ships offline again?”

“I don’t know. Should I message them to ask, do you think?”

“It’s just that -”

“McKay,” John said from the passenger seat, once again having to physically restrain himself from vaulting over the mid console and grabbing the controls, “would you _please_ look where you’re going?”

McKay did a double take and sat up in his chair, grasping the controls too tight again. As it turned out the jumper, once initialized by someone with the gene, could be used by other people - a fact that McKay had taken to with a unique mix of horrified fascination and fragile bravado, while sending John to the brink of cardiac arrest once every five minutes.

“At least try flying in a straight line.”

“I _am_ flying in a straight line!”

The windshield display very helpfully brought up their flight trajectory, which was about as steady as a drunk assuring a policeman  that of course he could walk along that line, occiffer, watch him. John lifted his eyebrows meaningfully.

“Straight’s overrated,” Rodney muttered, but he did adjust their course a little to the right. “Just a matter of perspective, really.”

“You two can come home now,” the city said. “You’ve been out for hours. I have all the information we’re going to get from this. Maybe it’ll make more sense once I analyze it.”

John looked at the landscape beneath them. If he hadn’t seen it crawling like an anthill before, he would have been hard pressed to believe the Waste held anything but lashing winds and enough magical radiation to shake up time itself and give birth to a veritable matryoshka doll of Grandfather Paradoxes.

“Yeah, okay. McKay, turn us around nice and sl - no, no, no, not that button, that button is not our friend in this - ow!”

“...maybe you should take over for a while.”

“ _This_ is why parents get someone else to teach their kids how to drive.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“Getting home in one piece would be a welcome bonus,” the city said and signed off with a sigh.

 

\---

 

They went through the results after dinner, Rodney taking up position in front of a projected map and gesticulating as he talked.

“Okay, see here. These ships were active the last time we scanned the area.” Red dots appeared on the map like the landscape had contracted measles. “And this is how it looked this time.”

A lot of the red dots faded away, mostly around the edges, leaving a smaller central cluster behind. Rodney rubbed his chin and frowned at it.

“This is good news, though,” John said. “Isn’t it? Less humanitarian vampire demons running around equals good?”

Rodney threw his arms up despairingly. “Well, _I_ don’t know. Maybe they’ve decided that world domination is just too much work and that becoming peaceful farmers is their backup plan. Or, more likely, this is the quiet before the storm and they’re planning something _awful_.”

“It’s weird,” the city agreed thoughtfully. “The active ships seem to make up the center of the hive, as if they were… conserving power, perhaps. There’s also this.” Three of the red dots lit up, forming a rough triangle. “They’re sending out a continuous signal of some sort. I honestly have no idea what it is, but if I were to hazard a guess… I’d say they were searching for something.”

“Like what?” Rodney asked.

“Like I don’t know, that’s why I said ‘something’ instead of anything more specific, Rodney.”

John broke in before he had a snark war on his hands. “So what do we do about all this?”

The city hummed pensively. “I don’t see how there’s much we _can_ do, except wait it out until Teyla gets back to us. I’ll keep looking over the information, but for now I think that plan is still our best bet.”

“Operation ‘Hurry Up and Wait’ proceeds as before, then.”

“Basically.”

Rodney clapped his hands together. “Then it’s time for some new provisions, don’t you think?”

“I - sure?” John said, watching Rodney flit back and forth across the room to gather up his jacket and wallet and whatever wizard stuff he thought would come in useful. “Where are you -”

“Hold that thought, I’ll be back before you know it.”

 

\-------

 

“I’m back,” Rodney announced half an hour later, hip-checking the door shut while holding up a paper bag in one hand and a packet of pastries in the other.

“What’s the big occasion?” John asked, taking the bag from Rodney and hearing the clinking of bottles.

Rodney stuck out his lower lip contemplatively. “We may not be as screwed as we thought we were? At least we’re not dead yet? I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here, but I can come up with more if you’d like.”

“I’ll toast to that,” John conceded, following Rodney towards the stairs.

 

\---

 

A couple of hours later John was feeling a lot more at peace with the world at large. He was also lying flat on his back and watching the sky through the glass ceiling, wondering if there were really that many stars or if his vision had gone double already. Rodney had good taste in beer.

Rodney was still sitting upright, an almost perplexed look on his face, one of his feet tilting idly back and forth as he took another sip.

“Stars,” he said, blurrily, gesturing at the ceiling. “There’s a lot of them.”

“Huh.”

“They seem so close up here, too. Like you could reach out and touch them. Well, if they _were_ close enough for us to touch we’d probably be too busy being melted down into chunks of plasma,” he amended. ”But you know. Figuratively.”

“I know what you mean,” John said.

“I think… the Ancients used to have some mythology crap about stars. ‘S weird, really, they didn’t really do superstition otherwise. It’s like… we think of them as gods, and they were just really into... science and magic and stuff.”

“And they kind of seem like a big bunch of assholes,” John supplied. “Running off and leaving all their messes for us to clean up.”

“That too. When you think of it the city’s kind of the pinnacle of that whole culture, though. Half artificial intelligence, half… I don’t know, spirit, maybe? Something magical, anyway. Makes you wonder why they left it behind.”

“Mhm.”

John looked at Rodney looking at the stars for a long time, steeped in second hand wonder. Then Rodey let out a tired sigh.

“You know, I wish I could still do music, sometimes,” he said, apropos of nothing, brushing a hand through his thinning hair. “But… well.”

John glanced away, drumming his fingers against the side of his bottle. “Yeah? What’d you play, again?”

“The piano, when I was a kid. I wasn’t good enough to keep playing, though.”

“What, there’s an exam?”

Rodney snorted, but didn’t elaborate. “I should have picked up on the music code thing earlier, really. There’s an old legend about an Ancient stopping an active volcano by singing the continents to sleep; they must have thought there was some kind of special power in it. Everyone thought it was a metaphor, though. Hard language to translate. Like... ” He made some vague hand movements as if trying to swat the right words out of the air. “Like catching fireworks with a kitchen sieve. Even their adverbs were overachievers. Hard to tell whether something’s technical specifications or an epic ballad.”

His cheeks were slightly flushed.

“You could start playing the piano again,” John said finally. “What’s stopping you?”

“I… nothing, I suppose. I just don’t do that anymore.” They were both silent for a long while, and then Rodney said: “Hey, Sheppard - penny for your thoughts?”

John blinked in surprise. “Huh? I don’t know. Something about a desert, I guess. Why?”

“You know what your problem is?” Rodney asked, inclining his bottle towards John.

“I’m relieved to know it’s just the one.”

“Speaking rhetorically. Your problem…” He paused, as if trying to remember what John’s problem was, exactly, or maybe just to rephrase something in his head. “Yeah, no, I don’t know. Maybe that’s it. I can never tell if you’re... You never _say_ stuff. We’ve been here for months and we talk all the time but I’m still not sure I know the first thing about you.”

His tone held a twinge of frustration, like it’d been bothering him for a while and the alcohol had finally loosened up his tongue enough to let it out.

John thought about it. “I like Ferris wheels, football, and anything that goes over 200 miles per hour.”

“...well, that’s something.”

John, realizing that for all that had been the best he could do it lacked a certain something, tried to to put something else together. “I… it’s not on purpose,” he said after a while. His breath felt all wrong in his chest, and he focused on a small scratch on the back of Rodney’s hand. “I don’t mean to…”

“I’d gathered,” Rodney said wryly. “Don’t worry about it, it’s just me being… stupid.”

In the ensuing silence John took another sip of his drink. He didn’t think Rodney was stupid. He let his arm rest over his eyes. Everything suddenly seemed very heavy.

“Last person to say something like that to me was my wife,” John muttered.

“You’re married?” Rodney said after a while, as if each syllable needed to be delivered with utmost care or else wreak havoc on the world.

“I used to be,” John said, not opening his eyes. The weight of his arm across his face felt oddly comforting. “Not for the last five years or so, though. Didn’t work out.”

“Oh.” John glanced out from beneath his arm but Rodney was turned away, looking out the window towards the sea. “I mean - sorry. It’s the kind of thing you should say sorry for, isn’t it?”

“I guess. It wasn’t really... my dad liked her. Said he thought marrying her was the best thing I’d ever do.”

“Ah,” Rodney said.

“It wasn’t Nancy,” John said, willing the darkness behind his eyelids deeper. “She’s... good. She’s real good. Smart, funny, a much better friend than I deserved. I just... I was never there.”

“Yes, well. I guess… hm.” He heard the noise of Rodney twiddling the bottle around in his hands a couple of times, his tone like he’d suddenly remembered he’d left the metaphorical stove of his life on. “That kind of sounds like something my sister told me the last time I met her, actually. Before she threw a piece of wedding cake in my face.”

John lifted his arm and let it fall above his head. He glanced up at Rodney, who was looking slightly stricken, so John distracted him by touching his ankle and asking: “So you have a sister?”

Rodney surfaced a little at the touch and cleared his throat. “Yeah, uh, a little sister. Jeannie. I… we haven’t met in a while.”

“Family trouble?” John asked, realizing with a sinking feeling that the last time he’d spoken with Dave was well over seven years ago and promptly trying to reforget it.

“Yes. No. Well… we had a bit of a falling out. I mean - she’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant, just never tell her I said that or it’ll go straight to her head, and - and... Mum always seemed so bitter about getting married young and giving up her career and it seemed obvious that she should understand she was making the mistake of a…” Rodney trailed off, looking miserable. “Long story short, I totally ruined her wedding and said a lot of things that seemed smart at the time but might maybe have been… not so smart, and I haven’t even seen her kid. I don’t even know how old the kid is. Or what its - well, her - name is.”

“That does sound a little shitty,” John agreed.

“Yeah,” Rodney said.

John squinted at him. “So… have you tried to talk to her again, tell her you’re sorry?”

Rodney made a face of pure incredulity. “What? No! She probably never wants to see me again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Well, of _course_ she wouldn’t…” Rodney narrowed his eyes, as if some new and unfamiliar concept was trying to fit itself into the jigsaw puzzle of his brain. “Hm. I suppose… I suppose I never gave her a choice, did I. She wouldn’t even know my address anymore. I just assumed...”

“I’d want to talk to you again even if you’d ruined all my rhetorical weddings,” John said earnestly, then felt all blood leave his face as his ears caught up with his mouth.

Thankfully Rodney didn’t seem to be listening, caught up in some inner dilemma. “Maybe,” he ventured doubtfully. “Maybe I should ask _her_ what she wants once this whole crazy thing is done. I mean… either she tells me she never wants to see me again, which leaves us pretty much where we are right now anyway, or - or she wants something else, which, I suppose, uh… I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have to eat the tofurkey her useless linguist vegan husband makes without complaining. I could do that. I could _totally_ do that for her.”

“Maybe hold off on that ‘useless husband’ part when you talk to her,” John advised.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Rodney rubbed a hand across his face tiredly. “It all seems very complicated.”

“Well, you clearly miss her, right?” Rodney made the smallest sound of hesitant agreement. “So what’s the worst that could happen?”

“Oh, lots of things,” Rodney said immediately. “She could still be mad and throw lemons after me as I flee down the street. She could be hit by a bus and die horribly. _I_ could be hit by a bus and die horribly. Her daughter could get sick and die and I wouldn’t know how to fix it… freak lightning strikes…spontaneous human combustion, as scientifically unlikely as it is...”

John put his hand on Rodney’s thigh and patted it consolingly. “Let’s for one moment assume that you contacting your sister again is not the trigger for the apocalypse.”

Rodney moaned and slid down the wall a little, shifting John’s hand upwards towards his hip. “Maybe I should just continue being a hermit. In a few years I might work my way up to an _eccentric_ , that’s kind of socially acceptable, right? _”_

“You don’t have to make a decision about it either way right now, at any rate,” John said, because Rodney looked very confused and very dejected.

“This is why I like this continent,” Rodney said. “More penguins than people. Penguins are _easy_. In the land of the penguin the man with the herring is king.”

“Hm. We should make a club. The ‘Better Off In Antarctica’ club.”

Rodney snorted. “Well, we already have the coolest club house imaginable, so why not.”

“Calling dibs on Club Dictator For Life position, right now.”

A small grin edged its way onto Rodney’s face. “Oh no, no, no, I don’t think so, Sheppard.”

“What? The whole club was my idea, thus I get to be Club Dictator. Q.E.D.”

“We should put it to a vote, at least.”

“But would you look at that, club rules state that the Club Dictator For Life gets two votes, so there.”

Rodney sniggered and said something under his breath about the usual fate of utilitarian regimes, which would have been grounds for immediate club excommunication if John didn’t like him so much.

He patted Rodney’s hip. “Don’t sulk, you can be… First Wizard or something. Eminence grise sort of thing; everyone knows the grand vizir is always the one who’ll really screw you over.”

Rodney made an unconvinced noise behind his laughter.

John decided to sweeten the pot, if only because a club of one would be really sucky. “First Wizard _and_ co-Supreme Dictator For Life?”

“Oh stop it, you’re making me dewy eyed here. _Leadership_ ,” Rodney said ardently, clutching a fist to his chest.

“That’s all sorted, then,” John said, pushing himself up to sit with his back against the wall, next to Rodney. “All we need now would be some fancy hats and it’s official. Practically how all governments get started, I reckon.”

Rodney ducked his head and smiled, one of those rare unguarded ones that crossed his face like a lick of sunlight and reminded John of those first few days after school was over for the summer, when everything was new and green and full of glorious possibilities.

John was about to grin back - and then he froze.

His eyes flickered from the pale, soft skin under Rodney’s ear, right out there in the open when he bowed his head like that, to the broad, rounded stretch of his shoulders and the quiet solidity of his chest.  

Oh no.

Rodney was turned slightly towards him, and he could follow the slow, even rise and fall of the breath moving in his chest - hell, John was close enough that he could have reached out and felt it under his hand if he wanted to.

No. No, no, no.

John sat there, petrified, as Rodney looked up and drained the last of his beer. The mouth of the bottle rested momentarily on the soft swell of his lower lip. He was still smiling, eyes bright and blue even in the low light.

_Shit_ , John thought. _Shit, shit, shit, shit. Fuck._

“Something wrong?” Rodney asked, peering rather blearily - they had been through quite a few beers at this point - at him.

“Nah,” John said, sounding strangled to his own ears. “Everything’s good.”

“Right. Okay. It can be hard to tell with the… face. Is there another one in there?” McKay asked, gazing sadly into his empty bottle.

John squinted at the bag and gave one bottle an experimental shake. “No, we’re out.”

“Oh well, I suppose it’s time to hit the hay anyway,” Rodney said, pushing himself stiffly to his feet. “The next time we do this I’m bringing a pillow, though, my back is killing me.”

“Mhnm,” John said noncommittally.

“See you tomorrow,” Rodney said, stumbling out the door. John heard him having a one-sided argument with the transporter controls - a fight in which, amazingly, he appeared to be the underdog for quite a while - before he let out a triumphant ‘hah!’ and everything went quiet.

John stayed there with his back pressed against the wall, staring blankly into space.

_nice to see you’re catching on,_ the city said in his head.

“I - what? You _know?_ ”

_I can always feel it,_ the city said, almost wistfully. _I’m pretty close to the horse’s mouth, as it were. if you’d pardon the expression, you’ve got a tell-tale heart._

John stared in what he hoped was its general direction. “I swear to god - ”

I’m _not going to tell, you doofus. it’s none of my business, really. though maybe if_ you _listened to your heart a little more often, you wouldn’t be in this situation._

“Has McKay been feeding you romance novels?” John asked suspiciously.

_har har. laugh it up, but I’m not the one so oblivious to my own mind that it needs to skywrite a message for me to even pick up on it._

John rubbed at his face with the base of his hand. There was an ache brewing up behind his right eye.

... _you’re not taking this very well, are you._

“What makes you say that,” John choked out.

_John, having feelings is not a_ crime _._

“What it _is_ is inconvenient. It’s going to make everything… awkward.”

_well, yes, but everything you organics do seems incredibly inconvenient and awkward,_ the city said easily. _your wonky programming is what gives you your roguish charm. humans are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. in my experience it’s mostly just nougat, sadly, but still._

When John didn’t answer, the city added: _…that was a joke. kind of. I was trying to lighten the mood._

“Right.” John felt a slight surge of resentment. His head was churning everything around like a maelstrom swallowing a shipwreck, and the city wouldn’t stop talking long enough for him to get on top of it. It was unfair, he knew - it was just trying to help, and he wouldn’t be able to get on top of this even if he was surrounded by pure monastic silence, but he just wanted the whole world to… to shut up for one damn moment and leave him alone. The city was just the only person standing within shooting range, that was all.

The city seemed to pick up on it, because it was sharp when it said: _hey, I get it, you don’t like wanting things. very scary. which is probably why you thought exiling yourself to the emptiest continent on the planet sounded like a good idea. it’s the place for someone who didn’t really mean to have a future._

John looked up at the stars.

_no, no, no, not like that! I didn’t mean to - you didn’t do anything wrong, okay? whatever you_ think _I’m thinking, I’d_ never _think that about you. it’s just… you_ do _have a future here. with us._

John couldn’t say anything. 

_hey,_  the city said after a while, voice so soft it was like a hand stroking through his hair after a long day. _it’ll be okay, John. there’s enough time to figure it out. we don’t have to do it all at once._

John closed his eyes, feeling like the stars lingered on the inside of his eyelids. His whole body buzzed like one big electric current. Rodney’s mouth was lopsided, so that his grin came out slightly crooked. It was… cool. It made his nerves stand on end and his chest do a twisting thing. In a flash he was reminded of flying for the first time - that same obvious rightness, like he’d always been meant to be there at that moment and had just forgotten it for a while.

He brushed his fingers over the corner of his mouth.

“I think… I’ll just sleep for a while,” he said eventually.  

_...up here?_

“Yeah. I, uh. I can’t deal with today until tomorrow.” Maybe it would go away with a good night’s sleep. Maybe he was just confused because of Rodney’s excellent taste in alcohol. Maybe Rodney’s nipples - which were neat and pink, John had gotten a look once when Rodney spilled some salamander blood on his t-shirt and had to take it off in a hurry before it etched through - maybe they would fit nicely between John’s lips.

John rhythmically banged the back of his head against the floor.

_well, I guess. I’ll get you a blanket and some pillows, at least, hang on._

“Thanks.”

And perhaps it was the beer, or perhaps the universe had finally elected to take pity on him, but he fell asleep between one breath and the next, and all he dreamed about was flying.

 

\-------

 

He _didn’t_ think a lot about sex, really, never had; from time to time the offer came tumbling into his lap and he was happy to oblige, but that was about it. It had been a feature of life much like a direly needed shower or a good sandwich – enjoyable in their time and place, but not really a competition to things that go over 200 miles per hour. Nancy… well, Nancy had always been different, but perhaps not in the way he’d hoped. And maybe, eventually, if Holland hadn’t gotten his stupid ass blown out of the sky - but that was just it, he had. It didn’t matter now.

The worst part was that Rodney was always _there_ , and there was this to be said about any space occupied by Rodney McKay: it was not subtle about it. Ignoring him was, at the best of times, a feat that ought to earn you automatic canonization, and John wasn’t feeling particularly holy these days.

What he hadn’t quite realized before was that he was constantly reaching out and touching Rodney, patting a shoulder here and knocking knees together under the breakfast table there. John didn’t usually do that kind of stuff, he wasn’t very good at it - Nancy had once laughed that sometimes approaching him for a hug consisted of not taking his initial panicked expression personally, and she’d been the one person in the world he had trusted the most, once upon a time. He had handshakes down pat, but the rest of it seemed to hit him out of left field every damn time. He usually tried to downplay it, and on the surface it worked, but anyone who’d been in a position to notice it tended to see through it pretty quickly. Nancy had known him for long enough that she’d always known and seemed to just be happy for every time he’d kissed her hair or held her hand, Holland hadn’t really seemed to mind - and a lot of others had taken it as a rejection or, worse, as a personal failing on their part. It wasn’t awesome or anything, but it was what it was.

But now there was… this, whatever _this_ was. Rodney, on his part, seemed cheerfully oblivious to the complete and utter disaster John was turning into, which was one of life’s small mercies, at least. If John was put in a position where he’d have to talk about this, he was pretty sure the autopilot of his subconscious would kick in and have him jump out the nearest window.

He wanted… he wasn’t sure what he wanted.

One day, in pure desperation, he excused himself under the guise of taking a shower - the showers and the bathrooms were the only places the city alway kept its eyes and ears closed, cross my processing core and hope to die.

He made sure that the door was locked twice, just to be on the safe side.

John could feel his cheeks glow hot and red as he unfastened his belt and shimmied out of his pants and boxers, throwing them into a random corner of the room and letting his t-shirt follow suit. He spent about three seconds trying to get the shower temperature right before deciding it didn’t really matter. His whole body was aching with some strange demanding feeling that wasn’t quite hunger or the dizzying frustration of not getting enough air but contained something of both; he didn’t give a damn if the water was a little on the cold side right now.

Sliding his hand down to his already achingly hard cock, he closed his eyes and ducked his head against the spray.

He imagined sidling up behind a Rodney standing at his work bench and leaning in to press his face against his neck, brushing his lips against the soft skin until Rodney gave a sigh and leaned back against him, solid and warm and arching into John’s touch, getting to slide his arms around him and hug him close.    

Being pressed in against a wall with Rodney kissing him, safely nestled in that small warm space and running his hands down Rodney’s back and hips to squeeze his goddamn distracting ass, the sweet rounded curves of it filling his hands perfectly. The thought coiled hot and sharp in his gut, making him feel like everything had gone imbalanced inside him. Rodney’s ass, his broad shoulders, the soft curve of his stomach; John’s hands hurt to reach out and touch, to remove every scrap of clothing on him and crowd up against him.

He thought about pushing him down into the messy sheets of their bed, trailing his hands up the inside of Rodney’s naked thighs - maybe put his lips there, watch as Rodney moaned and spread his legs, kiss him all the way up to his hipbones and back while he wriggled and laughed and stroked his fingers through John’s hair.

John bit his lip and sped up his hand, breath catching awkwardly in his throat.

Slow, drawn out morning sex, the kind that had always been his favorite with Nancy, everything lazy and warm and close, Rodney’s big callused hands stroking unhurriedly down his back, having all the time in the world to press kisses to Rodney’s lopsided mouth and his jawline and his neck, nosing his way down to his chest and licking a nipple.

Maybe Rodney’s cock would be hot and heavy in his palm. Maybe Rodney would groan and clutch at him when he reached down to touch it, his skin flushing as John started jerking him off. Maybe he’d fumble for John’s cock in return, bringing their hands together and getting into a joined rhythm, moaning against John’s ear as he - as -

Rodney moaning open-mouthed as his pale, plump ass swallowed John’s cock, head thrown back and hips lifted for it as John fucked him. Lying under Rodney, opening his legs wider as Rodney slid into him, Rodney’s hand callused and gentle on him. Taking Rodney in his mouth, shaft brushing his lips as it thrusted in and out, sucking as Rodney fucked his mouth - Rodney’s thighs around his hips as John took him again and again, slowly coming to pieces under him, pleading against John’s lips as John licked into his wet, well-used mouth. Kissing him carefully, sweetly, as he came, face open and happy, his body warm and soft against John’s. Feeling a hand stroking through his hair after -

He came with a sharp breath that sounded pained even to his own ears, still caught up in the phantom touch of Rodney’s slack, satisfied mouth on his.

For a while he just stood under the spray with his eyes closed, trying to get his breath back. There were afterimages on the inside of his eyelids he didn’t know what to do with.

He wasn’t sure he felt better; if anything the hunger had gone grudgingly dormant right under his skin, biding its time. John swore sincerely and rubbed at his face.

 

\-------

 

Rodney stuck his head in through the door. “Fred’s in here, right?”

“Yeah, he’s in his bowl.” John said from where he was slouched on the Ancient sort-of sofa and reading one of the  old comic books Rodney had found in the general chaos of his bed room. The comic involved lizard men, a guy who’d been given crystal balls for eyes by a witch and who could now see the future - in a vague and useless if dramatically convenient way - and this one girl who’d been scratched by a cursed hummingbird, which somehow gave her the power of flight. It was pretty great.

“Good.” Rodney edged in between the couch and the table, nudging John’s legs with his knee until John withdrew his feet from the table and let him pass. “I made some sandwiches, but we didn’t have any cheese left so they’re all just ham and pickles, sorry. Oooh, I remember this arc,” he added, picking up one of the comic books John hadn’t gotten to yet.

“No spoilers,” John said severely, crossing his ankles and putting his feet back on the table. He pointedly didn’t think about Rodney brushing against him just then.

Rodney scoffed. “Hey, that was _once_. Okay, maybe twice. But that third time was really your own fault, how was I to know you hadn’t - thanks.” He took the sandwich John handed him to shut him up and leaned back, humming to himself as he read. Every now and then he’d throw the salamander a couple of crumbs, which were devoured with happy little sounds from deep within in the bowl.

John was just about to ask Rodney whether he’d missed an issue or if the fact that the leader of the lizard men was crystal ball guy’s father had just never been brought up before, when the city made a surprised noise.

“The gate just activated,” it said, pulling back from where it had been reading over John’s shoulder and flickering over to the opposite wall. “Kingshaven door.”

Rodney looked up in surprise. “What? But it’s the middle of the night over there, that doesn’t make sense.”

“Nevertheless, there is someone at the door.”

Rodney shrugged and got up, walking to the nearest transporter with John on his heels.

Right before Rodney pulled the heavy door open, the city spoke urgently into John’s head.

_John, hold on, you’re not wearing your amulet._

“Oh. Thanks.” John pulled the amulet over his head just as the door swung open.  

A dark young man was standing on the doorstep, dripping wet from the rain that was falling over the capital. The way he held himself - like he was apologizing for taking up space while also apologizing for apologizing for taking up space - set off a spark of recognition in John’s brain.

“Kanaan, right?”

“Huh?” Rodney looked extremely confused for a second, then snapped his fingers rapidly. “Oh yeah, Teyla’s friend, the one she was fighting with.”

“Yes,” Kanaan said in his soft, mournful voice. “I am sorry for disturbing you so late.”

“How did you even find this place?” McKay demanded. Kanaan meekly pointed to the makeshift name plaque beside the door. “Oh, uh, right. What do you want?”  

He handed Rodney a small metal canister that could be twisted in the middle into two parts. “I have a message for you.”

Rodney took it doubtfully and opened it, a slip of rolled-up paper sliding out and into his palm. He unfurled it, wrinkling his brow at whatever he read, then leaned to the side so John could read over his shoulder.

“What the hell is that supposed to say?” John asked, because the squiggly symbols seemed like so many scribbled lines to him.

“It’s enchanted,” Rodney said, turning the canister over and over in his hand until he lifted it to his mouth and blew on the sleek metal, causing a very faint line of writing to appear in red letters. “Rather trickily too, in fact, I don’t think anyone’s used this technique since before Sateda fell. I’m not quite sure...”

Kanaan slid a hand under his jacket and brought out a battered lighter of the old type, those where the flames came from a small charm carved on the inside. “Let me,” he said, flicking it on and taking the canister before slowly brushing the flame against the metal. The letters came back, much stronger now.

“Could you please give me the - thank you.”  Rodney handed him the slip of paper, which he then folded delicately over the glowing metal, making sure the squiggles lined up with the letters. The ink gave a sizzling sound.

“Oh, well,” Rodney said, half fascinated and half embarrassed. “I would have figured that out too.”

“I am sure you would,” Kanaan said, conscientiously holding the paper away from him so he couldn’t see the writing as he gave it back to Rodney.

This time John had no problems reading the note, written out in a strong elegant hand:

**_Acquired ZPM. Unforeseen difficulties. Not much time. Bring the information and meet me at these coordinates within three days._ **

**_\- T_ **

“Those would make up a gate address, then?” John said, pointing to the vaguely familiar signs scrawled at the bottom.

“Mhm,” Rodney confirmed, looking over at Kanaan. “Teyla gave you this?”

Kanaan shifted uncomfortably. “Yes. My people have found ways to communicate amongst ourselves without relying on the official networks - though I cannot grasp why she would not simply contact the two of you directly.”

Rodney wrinkled his forehead and looked over at John. “Honestly, the only reason I could think of is that her crystal ball signal was compromised somehow. Though that leaves the question of why she wouldn’t just use some other form of communication - she should know where to find us.”  

“She did not elaborate,” Kanaan said, the light from a nearby street light throwing deep shadows over his face. “She sent me a separate note - from her tone I would guess she was in quite a hurry. Perhaps she did not wish to take the chance of someone tracking the message down to find you. She has exchanged messages with me before, it would not appear suspicious for her to do so now.”

He looked colder and wetter than ever, and John wished they could’ve let him into the city. Teyla would probably dislocate more than his arm if Kanaan succumbed to consumption on their watch. John drummed his fingers on Rodney’s shoulder. “She didn’t explain anything more in your note?”

“No. It was… she says there is something she needs me to do, something to do with the missing children. Teyla is a great leader and a… a good friend. If she needs my help, for whatever reason, I will give it.”

“Right,” Rodney said, squinting skeptically. “ _Friend_.”

Kanaan gave no sign of having picked up on Rodney’s sledgehammer-subtle hint.

“She is pretty great,” John agreed. “First time I met her she almost dislocated my shoulder.”

“A moment that still brings a tear to the eyes of everyone who was there,” Rodney said with mock sincerity. John gave him a look, which he cheerfully pretended not to notice.

“I was surprised that she came to me at all. After her father’s death we… have not spoken much. Many things changed after that.”

“She trusted you enough for this,” John pointed out.

Kanaan looked down, rain dripping off his eyelashes. “Yes. I suppose she… I should go.”

“Yeah, okay,” Rodney said, snatching the lighter out of Kanaan’s unprotesting hand and stroking his fingers over it. He closed his eyes for a second, deep in concentration. “Here,” he said brusquely, shoving it back into Kanaan’s grasp. “Put it somewhere near your skin and it should keep you warm until you get home. You live on the _opposite side of the city_ , man, I can’t believe you didn’t even bring an umbrella, it’s like you’re deliberately courting the pneumonia fairy or something.”

John pursed his lips against a grin as Kanaan blinked in confusion. Then he looked away and smiled shyly, slipping the lighter into his breast pocket. “Thank you, Doctor McKay. I shall remember the umbrella next time.”

“I’d hope so,” Rodney muttered as they watched Kanaan disappear in the darkness of the street.

 

\---

 

“Before we do anything,” Rodney said, bending over the console to press a button just out of reach while John valiantly kept his eyes fixed on a patch of wall right over his shoulder, “let’s just make sure that Teyla really isn’t picking up our call. Hm, that’s locked in, everything’s set up… try to make contact with her crystal ball now.”

The city brought up a screen which flickered for a second, and then went completely dark.

“It failed,” the city said, in case their fragile meat brains - its words, not John’s - didn’t get it.

Rodney hummed thoughtfully. He stretched over again and this time John had to admit defeat and steal a look at his ass. Not even Rodney’s supremely unflattering sartorial choices could hide the nicely rounded curves of it, John noted despairingly. “Might just be a fluke. Let’s try again… there.”

The screen stayed blank.

“I guess that’s our answer,” Rodney said, leaning back against the console and crossing his arms over his chest. “No crystal ball signal there. Something must have happened on her end.”

“Maybe she needs help? She seemed to expect to stay wherever she was for a while, something must have happened for her to take down the signal,” John said.

“Or maybe that wasn’t her choice.”

“You’re thinking they had to go on the run?”

Rodney tapped his foot. “It’s really the only thing that makes sense, don’t you think? I mean, why would she send the message directly to Kanaan unless she couldn’t trust any other channels?”

“Um, yeah, that’s a point,” said John, who’d been momentarily distracted by the way Rodney’s arms moved under the sleeves of his t-shirt. He really did have quite impressive overarms for a scientist who thought having to lift books was a necessary indignity, and there was a light scattering of freckles across his underarms, faint enough to be unnoticeable unless you looked closely. They probably came out more in summer, if Rodney would ever deign to have the sun reach his skin without layers of clothes and sunscreen between them. Maybe he had freckles in other places, too.

John hated everything.

“I suppose there’s only one way to find out,” Rodney said, picking up the note and looking it over again.

“I don’t like this,” the city said, unease in its whispery voice. “It seems.. odd.”

Rodney sighed. “I know, I know, it’s getting sketchy, but… well, do we need a ZPM or don’t we?”

“We really, really do,” the city said morosely. “And Teyla could be in trouble.”

“Then I better go and mix up some jinxes,” Rodney said, putting down the note and cracking his knuckles.

 

\-------

 

“Well, this is… ominous,” Rodney said as the gate shut behind them, looking around at the forest clearing they’d stepped into. The stars twinkled overhead and the trees loomed ominously around them.

John kept his hand resting on the gun tucked into his belt. “You’ll note the lack of a welcome mat, yeah.”

“Maybe we should just… leave. Right now.”

“Hm…” John looked around the clearing, but there was nothing there but moonlight and a chill breeze. No sign of Teyla, no sign of _anything,_ not even the sound of nocturnal animals scuttling about their business. A small growl from his primal brain was telling him something was amiss.

“This was a bad idea,” Rodney whispered, loudly enough that people could probably hear him from the capital. “Really, really bad. We’ll go back, look for Teyla some other way, forget we were ever this stupid and move on with our lives, okay?”  

There was a small clicking noise somewhere nearby, and without John quite knowing why, it sent his nerves straight into high alert. He didn’t stop to question it - that instinct had saved his ass much more frequently than common sense or cold logic; he just turned to Rodney and grabbed his arm.

“Something’s wrong,” John said, pulling out the gun. “Dial the gate, we need to get the hell out of here.“

“What -”

“Rodney!”

“Yes, yes, I’m doing it, hang on - ”

John tried to listen for the sound again while Rodney stumbled back to the gate, but it was hard to pick out anything from the other rustlings and creaks of the forest. Was that whispering voices or just leaves swishing in the breeze?

“There,” Rodney said as the gate lit up with its usual blue light, “c’mon, I think I hear them too now.”

“Go,” John said, pretty much shoving Rodney through the gate and moving to follow him, looking over his shoulder with the gun lifted when -

There was a flash of green light and suddenly John lost all sense of what was happening; one second he’d seen Rodney pass through the gate one step ahead of him, and the next thing he knew he was lying face down in the grass, unable to move as much as a finger, a pain burning hot behind his ribs.

“Sir! Sir, we got him!”

“I can see that, lieutenant. Well done.”

In his daze John had the impression of people moving in around him, heavy boots thundering over the ground. Something wedged itself under his shoulder, and without being able to resist he felt himself being flipped over on his back. First he saw only the stars through the tree crowns, then faces moved into his field of vision. One of them was wearing a faint, horribly familiar smile.  

“The wizard Mer, I presume?” said Ladon Radim.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haHA I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me! ...which would be understandable, really.
> 
> A big thank you to popkin16 for the beta!


	9. In which John has a rough time of it all around

 

“Merrikans, dial out. We can’t have anyone coming back for him just yet.”

“Yes, sir. He’s got some sort of… amulet on him, sir. D’you think - “

“Give me that,” Ladon said sharply. “No, you idiot, don’t _touch_ it, use the tongs I gave you. We don’t know what kind of wards he could have placed on it. Hm. Interesting. Can’t say I’ve ever seen a design like this before. Very impressive. Get the blindfold on him.”

John got a glimpse of the lieutenant - a freckly long-faced young woman who couldn’t have looked more nervous if she’d been about to do dental work on a dragon - before a bag was pulled over his face and blocked everything out.

“Never seen a spell work like that, sir. He just… fell down.”

“It was given to us from a - a special consultant. I couldn’t take the risk of actually hurting him; this is much more efficient.”

“How long’s he going to be out of it?”

“Let’s tie him up before we find out, lieutenant.”

John could barely feel it when his hands were tied behind his back, never mind fight it - what the hell had that spell Ladon was talking about _done_ to him? After a while he got the vague sense of two pairs of hands hoisting him up, leaving him dangling.

“Take him back to the cart,” Ladon said. “We’ve got a long trek ahead of us.”

 

\-------

 

As far as violent kidnappers went, these guys weren’t the worst of the bunch. They’d given him water twice already, in addition to some unsweetened biscuits that hadn’t even gone stale, and for the most part they simply left him alone in the back of the cart. He was a bit insulted, to be honest - none of them had even tried to dig a boot in while Ladon had his back turned. He used to be a lot better at riling up these kinds of people. Maybe he was losing his touch.

To add insult to injury these guys obviously hadn’t gotten the memo that if you’re going to tie the hero up and leave him unsupervised for hours on end, you should at least have the common decency to provide him with something sharp so he could painstakingly saw through the ropes, letting him finally break free right at the moment where dramatic timing demanded and beat the crap out of them on his way to freedom. John had tried to wriggle his hands free for hours on end, but the knots stayed stubbornly solid and competently tied and all he had to show for it were raw wrists. Standards really were falling everywhere.

Towards nightfall on the first day the pain began.

To begin with it was a murmur at the edge of his perception, low-level discomfort in the darkness behind the blindfold. Perhaps he picked up on it faster this time because there was nothing to distract him. He’d been half expecting it at any moment - the sense memory of that day in the capital was still fresh enough to hover at the forefront of his mind. This time, with nothing to keep him occupied, he found himself dozing off for longer and longer periods, sluggish and dizzy as if he’d lost a lot of blood.

The place where his heart should be hurt. It really, really hurt.

At one point he woke to cold air against the side of his face, the cart finally jerking to a stop.

“Get him inside,” called the voice of Ladon Radim from somewhere out there. “Commander Kolya would like to interrogate him as soon as possible.”

Good luck with that. John wouldn’t trust himself to answer a question like ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ right now.

“Come on,” someone said, and hands grabbed his shoulders, urging him to his feet. John took to that about as well as a ragdoll, flopping helplessly back down when they let go of him. He wished he could say the weakness was the setup for a feint, but sadly that was exactly as capable as he was right now. Someone slapped him across the face through the bag, and his head lolled feebly in response.

“Oh, for the love of… Ladon, sir! I think he’s unconscious. What do you want us to do with him?”

“He’s _what_?”  

Well, John thought as the world tilted back into darkness, at least he’d have the satisfaction of putting a dent in their schedule.

 

\-------

 

The first thing John noticed upon waking was that it didn’t hurt quite so much anymore, and that the cotton candy feeling in his head would imply it was because of some serious painkillers. He had no idea where he was. Bad start.

Very, very carefully he opened his eyes a crack.

He was lying on a bench of some kind, stretched out on his side. The room around him was well-lit and bunker-like, grey concrete walls and floor. On low benches all around the room were various scientific instruments, some of them ticking gently along, some of them still. A filing cabinet blocked out most of his line of sight.  

Slowly it sank in that there were voices somewhere nearby, a hushed conversation behind the cabinet. He kept completely still and tried to listen in.

“...not looking forward to telling Kolya about this little hitch in his plan.” Ladon. Even through the haziness, John felt his knuckles itch.  

“So what’s wrong with him, exactly?” That was a woman’s voice, young and sharp.  

“You know that I don’t like to say this, Sora,” Ladon said, “but I honestly have no idea. It looks like a fever of some sort, with the shaking and sweating, but if anything his temperature is slowly _sinking_. I’m not a doctor, though. I’ve sent for someone to come have a look at him.”

“Huh. Well, he looks like shit, anyway.”

“That your _professional_ diagnosis, sergeant?”

The woman snorted. “You ass.”

“Mhm.”

The woman paced back and forth for a while, steps clipped against the floor. “Did they say there was someone else there with him?”

Ladon chuckled softly. “Well, Merrikans would swear so, but, you know. I think we all remember the noodle incidence. She is an excitable young woman.”

“I know I’m not eating any more chicken noodle soup in my _life_ ,” the woman snickered. “ _Two weeks straight_. Ancestors have mercy.”

“The whole thing went remarkably smooth, between the spell and your information. You did well. Your father would have been proud.”

“I - thank you, sir.” She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Speaking of family, I...I heard about your sister. I’m so sorry, Ladon.”

There was a long silence filled only with the clicking of Ladon working. “I’d rather not talk about that, Sora, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Of course. I just… Dahlia was always… it’s a shame.”

“Yes. It was.”

For a while there was more silence, that tense kind full of things not said that John had always dreaded. Then the woman said: “I’ll go report back to Kolya, then. Take that bullet for you, at least.”

“Thanks.”

Her footsteps disappeared. So now… there was only John and Ladon. John might feel like he was dying in slow motion, but Ladon had the general physique of a shrimp - it would be embarrassing if he couldn’t take down one noodly scientist on his own, even in this state. He slid down from the bench as noiselessly as possible and peered around the cabinet. Ladon was kneeling over something on the floor, tractating a bunch of wires with a speed that almost rivaled a heavily caffeinated Rodney. Good, he seemed distracted enough that this might work.

John picked up the nearest heavy object he could find - a squarish metal block with some kind of dial at the front - and slowly inched his way around the cabinet. Ladon didn’t look up as John closed in on him, took aim as well as he could with his vision occasionally going double, and...

It probably would have worked, too, if Ladon hadn’t heard him at the last moment and started turning around. The metal thing mostly glanced off, but one corner hit the side of his forehead with a crack and he went down with a startled yell, so maybe it had done the trick anyway. John swayed for a second, off balance after the misaimed swing, but then he put the thing down and started towards the door. Maybe if he could find somewhere to hide while he got his bearings, get an idea of the layout of this place -

Before he could do any such thing something barreled into him as mercilessly as a wrecking ball, punching the air out of him. After a second of confusion he realized that a woman with a mass of curly blond hair had him shoved up against the wall, a knife held discomfitingly close to his neck. “Bad call,” she hissed. From her voice she was the one Ladon had been talking to before. Where the hell had she come from? She must have moved like a snake to catch up with him like that. Or maybe he’d just underestimated just how lousy a state he was in, he amended as strange bruise-coloured fireworks went off in his vision - that was a possibility too.

Ladon made a pained noise from where he was lying on the floor, but held his hand up and waved at her. “No, don’t hurt him. We need him alive.”

“He almost smashed your skull in with that thing,” she snapped. Out in the hallway the echoing thunder of boots confirmed that whatever chance he’d had to get out mostly undetected, he’d now blown it spectacularly.

“I am aware. I was there.” Ladon touched the blood on his forehead and winced when he glanced at his fingers. He looked up at John, wrinkling his forehead as if he couldn’t quite decide whether to be angry or amused. “Not quite as subdued as we were lead to believe, huh?”

“Still pretty subdued,” John had to admit, voice raspy from the woman’s elbow pressing against his throat. His vision was getting dark around the edges again and he was almost glad of it - he had a suspicion he didn’t really want to be conscious for what came next.   

“Get him into a proper cell,” Ladon said. “I’ll deal with him later.”

John never got to enjoy that trip; the darkness came back and swallowed him whole.

 

\-------

 

_Fire and darkness; the high, jubilant call of children’s voices raised in song._

 

The summer John’s mom died there had been a Ferris wheel set up at the edge of town.

He couldn’t remember now why it had been there - maybe it was supposed to mark some kind of anniversary, maybe it had been a promotional stunt, maybe it had been part of a fair. Even back then he hadn’t cared much. All he knew was that right at the top, when the wind ruffled his hair and the world down there was finally far enough away, it felt like taking breaths between drowning.

 

_“This,” says the man with the pockmarked face, holding something up in front of John’s eyes. “Where did you get it?”_

_John tries to turn his head away. He’s already sinking down again, and this man seems inconsequential, disturbing far more important lines of thought._

_Something hits him hard across the face._

 

“You can even see that ugly statue behind City Hall from here, if you squint a bit,” Nancy pointed out, thoughtfully resting her chin on the passenger car railing. Nancy was John’s dad’s friend’s daughter, and she was the only other person who had taken the ride so many times that some of the ticket inspectors had taken pity on them and given them the occasional free round towards the end of the day, when the queue was getting sparse anyway. She had the world’s most infectious laugh, a secret love of comic books that she’d ordered John to never tell anybody about, and her nose wrinkled when she smiled.

She’d been the only one who knew where to find him.

“Seriously?” John asked, following her line of sight. He couldn’t see anything. “Yeah, I see it. Cool.”

“It’s a bit like flying, isn’t it? Seeing everything from up here.”

 _Well, that was always the point_ , John thought, but he said: “Yeah, I guess.”

He felt her gaze on the side of his face. She seemed… hurt, maybe, or sad, like one of the kids on the ground below whose balloon had slipped out of their hands and who now had to watch it drift away into the sky.

He didn’t want her to hurt, but he didn’t know how to heal it either.

They’d taken this ride five times in a row. If she didn’t say anything now, they’d never speak of it again; that was the rule.

“About your mom… I’m so sorry, John.”

He looked up at the clouds. A few stars were starting to come out. “Thanks.”

“Did you at least get to say goodbye?” Nancy asked quietly.

John thought about the room, the pills, the fragile shape under the covers that seemed less like his mom now and more like a ghost awaiting permission to leave.

“No,” he said. He didn’t say ‘all those pills on the nightstand’ or ‘mostly I’m relieved because there was nothing left there but pain’ or ‘I think she did it right before I came in, but I didn’t go get someone when she stopped breathing because she didn’t want to come back’.

“Oh.”

 

_Wait. The thing he’s holding - that’s the amulet. Rodney’s amulet._

_“It’s a phoenix,” he mumbles, and Kolya hits him again._

 

It was getting dark.

John didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want his father’s broken mirror of a face or all the things he should be telling Dave but couldn’t.

“Is your dad taking it…”

John shrugged helplessly, trapped in this quiet place where there was too much to say and nothing to say at the same time. He felt like he was standing on the outside and watching all of this happen, silent and cold.

Nancy had put her hand on his. He hadn’t shaken her off.

“You could stay at our place tonight, you know. It’s getting pretty late; Pa can just send a message to your father so he knows where you are, and we’ll put you up in the guest room.”

John stared down at their hands. The summer had given her freckles across her knuckles, sweetly scattered over her brown skin. His voice barely scraped out of his throat. “Thank you.”

“Any time,” she said, and she meant it, because Nancy never lied if she could help it.  

 

_“What do you know about the City of the Ancestors?”_

_“Commander Kolya. Sir. He’ll be no use to us if he’s dead.” Familiar voice. Grey eyes, rodent face. Ladon Radim._

_“Would you say he’s being particularly helpful right now, Ladon?”_

_“He’s sick. I’m not even sure he can hear us.”_

 

Some other place, some other time, sand and sun and sweat.

“Hey, Sheppard. Sheppard. _John_.”

“Hm?” John said, distracted. He really wished he’d paid more attention in geography class right now. So, if that mountain in the distance was what he thought it was, they should be heading… north. Definitely north.

Holland leaned more heavily on his shoulder now, his grip slipping from time to time. “I think I have to take a break, buddy. Just to get my breath back.”

“Yeah, okay. If they get us because you’ve skimped out on cardio, though…”

“Hah - oh man, don’t make me laugh, seriously. That hurts like a bitch.”

“I’ll restrain my inner comedian. Okay, look here…” He helped Holland sit down behind a convenient sand dune, safely out of sight.  

He caught a glimpse of Holland’s leg - or at least what was left of it. He winced.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Holland said - lied - and John was kind of confused because Holland was looking at _him_ with worry, like he was the one who was bleeding out in the sand. “John.”

John checked the tourniquet again. It was soaked through with blood, but the knot didn’t look like it was slipping. “I should have…”

Holland squeezed his shoulder. “No, don’t. It’s not your fault, John.”

 

_“Could he be faking it?”_

_“If he were I’m pretty sure his cover would have been blown when you gave his kidneys a good shake back there. Not the kind of thing you shrug off._ Sir. _”_

_“Hm.”_

 

His mouth tasted coppery and the desert sun was doing nothing to ease the cold that had snuck into his core.

“I knew you’d come for me,” Holland said dreamily after a while. “Only fucker I know who’s crazy enough to even think about pulling off something like this.”

“It didn’t make any damn difference anyway.” The words rose like bile in his throat.

Holland leaned his head against John’s shoulder, quiet and content like a kid who’s had a long day and is about to nod off.

“Didn’t it, John?”

John didn’t say anything for a long time.

 

_“Maybe we should take a break, sir.”_

 

“Holland?”

 

_“I agree, this is pointless. Take him back to the cell and get one of the medical officers to take another look at him.”_

 

“Holland.”

 

_“Yes, sir.”_

 

“Holland, this would be a really lousy time for a nap.”

John had heard people say that sometimes - that the dead look like they just fell asleep and never got up again. He hadn’t thought it was true before now.

 

_The touch of a warm, careful hand on his forehead._

_“He’s leaving,” Ladon Radim mumbles. “We’re losing him.”_

_John tries to open his eyes because that man has his amulet, Rodney’s amulet, and that’s not cool, that’s not how it should be, but Ladon is right, he is leaving, he’s going somewhere… somewhere_ else _..._

 

\-------

 

 _He is standing on a muddy plain, the night clinging to his skin like wet velvet. The only light is from the stars above, but in turn they seem all the brighter, a roaring forest fire crackling across the sky. In fact it looks like they’re getting closer, it looks like - no, the stars_ are _falling, raining down over the earth in a quiet rush, like a snowfall of light._

_The air smells of fireworks._

_A young man in white clothes is standing in the middle of the field, calmly looking up at the sky while the sparks fall around him. Each one hits the ground and gives one last brilliant flash of light and a high lingering note, like a violin string snapping. It makes him sad in a way he can’t explain, hearing that strange chorus of broken lights under the night sky._

_The man in white stands up taller as a spark that is brighter than the others twirls down towards him, and he’s reaching out his hands for it - he’s going to burn his hands clean off, John thinks distantly, it’s going to sear his veins from the inside out..._

_...and the young man catches it, cradling it between his cupped hands like a child would a firefly. It glows through his hands, making the blood flicker golden, lit up from the inside._

_He holds his hands up in front of his face and nods now and then, as if he’s on the listening side of a conversation. Then he shakes his head and says something, but John is too far away to pick it up. He moves a bit closer._

_Sometimes he thinks someone in the distance is calling his name, but when he looks around there is nothing but starlight right into the horizon._

_The man suddenly turns his head and looks straight at John. All at once John realizes that he’s not young at all - his face might be, but his eyes are not._

_“You are not supposed to be here,” the man says, but it’s too light to be an admonishment, just a friendly heads up._

_“I don’t know how to leave.”_

_The man tips his head on one side, watching John like you would an insect that has done something remarkable. “How very curious,” he says, shaking his curly head in amazement._

_“Gee, thanks. That’s helpful.”_

_The man shrugs, looking down at the light cradled in his hands, his brow crinkling slightly - worry, perhaps, or protectiveness. “How did you get here?”_

_John scratches his neck. “I don’t even know where ‘here’ is.”_

_“Ah.” He turns back to John. “I have got to wonder - do you have even the slightest idea of what you have done?”_

_John snorts and watches the stars fall. “Is that a serious question?”_

_The man chuckles good-naturedly, the light from his hands hitting his face at odd angles. “No, no, when you put it like that. If you had any understanding of how dangerous giving your whole heart to a place truly is… Hm. Maybe it is for the best.”_

_Overhead the stars dance and dwindle and sing._

_“...it’s beautiful,” John says, because it is; unspeakably sad, but beautiful._

_“It is, isn’t it,” the man says thoughtfully, though he’s still looking at John. “Hm. You_ are _of the blood and bounded by starlight… perhaps it is not so impossible after all.”_

_“If you say so,” John says._

_The man nods his head absently, as if reaching a decision.“I will wait for you here, then.”_

_“I - what?”_

_The man looks away from John’s face and over his shoulder. He smiles, a cheery twitch of his mouth that never reaches his eyes. “I believe someone is looking for you.”_

_John blinks - things are getting foggy again, and dark spots are starting to appear at the edge of his vision, but he turns to see what the man is looking at and there, far away, is a light that isn’t falling…_

 

\-------

 

Cold sweat clinging to his skin, his hands bound in front of him; it took a while to understand where he was.

“Has he said anything yet, Ladon?” said Sora’s voice somewhere nearby. John pushed his face down into the bedding, willing his body to stop shaking so he could listen. “Kolya is getting impatient.”

“He can be as impatient as he wants, he isn’t going to get anything out of the prisoner. The periods he’s lucid are getting shorter and further between every day. Even if we did try to interrogate him again I doubt we’d have anything to show for it except him blacking out for the rest of the day. Again.”

“He really hasn’t said anything?”

Ladon hesitated. “A few hours ago he… he was talking in his sleep, but it wasn’t a language I recognized.”

“Maybe he’s a foreigner.”

“Hm. Maybe.”

They were both quiet for a while, then Ladon said: “How’s our other… guest?”

“The same. It’s… rambling. Pretty disturbing.”

“By now he’s harmless. Couldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Still creepy as hell.”

“No argument there. At least the tech we got from him turned out to be useful. And without him and his spell we would never have found the wizard, unproductive as it has proven thus far.”

“They say it’s dying.”

“I believe so, yes.”

“...hell of a way to go. Never thought I’d feel sorry for a wraith.”

“What about that Athosian boy you were so intent on talking to? Has he said anything interesting yet?”

Sora let out a derisive snort. “That’s not why I captured him. He left for the city years ago, he doesn’t really know anything useful. I’m just waiting for him to attract the right… attention.”

“Sora, this plan of yours…”

“You don’t approve, I know. It’s not as though you’ve made a secret of it.”

“I just hope you know what you’re doing, that’s all. If the driving force behind this is your anger -”

“Kolya certainly seemed happy enough at the prospect of taking a prisoner with the Gift. Now that we’re losing the demon, it would be more crucial than ever.”

“I’m not questioning the usefulness of it, merely your motivations. Teyla Emmagan is a formidable enemy - going up against her without a clear head would be suicide.”

Teyla, John thought. They were saying something about Teyla. That was… he didn’t even know what that was. Good? Bad? Was she going to be in trouble, or was she going to be the trouble for someone else? His head spun unpleasantly, leaving his thoughts floating around aimlessly.

Sora stayed quiet for a while, the only sound some clinks and clicks from whatever Ladon was working on. “She left my father to die,” she said eventually.

“As far as I remember she lost her own father and five of her people on that expedition.”

“None of them would have had to die if we’d gone back to -” She broke off, audibly reining herself in. “I will be careful, Ladon.”

“Well, I wish you luck, anyway. It _would_ be a good resource to have.”

“Thanks.”

John didn’t know if he drifted off after that or if they just didn’t talk for a while, but the next thing he heard was Sora saying: “I’ll leave you with Mr. Coma here, then, I’ve got a briefing in ten minutes.”

“I will try to do without your charming conversation for a few hours.”

“Hah. You dick,” she said affectionately, and then she left the room.

John rested his forehead against the thin pallet he was lying on, exhaustion pumping through him in dull pulses. That little eavesdropping session had taken its toll, sending that telltale greyness into his head - he was going to pass out again.

He wondered what the hell was taking Rodney so long.   

 

\-------

 

_Fire within, fire in his veins, fire all around. There are war drums in his blood egging him on, sick laughter bubbling up as he feels the power surge and crest, a brutal savage song tearing up something deep in the fabric of the world and forcing it into new patterns._

_Somewhere far away something - someone - is screaming. He wonders if it’s him. He can’t hear the others. There used to be others. Didn’t there? He wasn’t always alone._

_They’re all looking at him with fear in their eyes. Good._ Good _._

_Perhaps now they’ll understand what they’ve done._

_He -_

_No, no, no, that’s not right. John forcibly drags himself away, the foreign memory too big, too everywhere-at-once to fit in his brain without one of them breaking. If he let it it would swallow him whole, one pinprick of light yielding to an all-consuming darkness._

_He casts around for his own memories to hold onto, only to find himself plunged straight from fire into ice water._

_His father is standing in the hallway, between John and the door. Cold light streams in through big windows, giving the room some of the clinical edge of a hospital. His father’s shadow is long and dark across the floor. John’s hand feels uncomfortably clammy where it’s clutching the suitcase handle._

_Dave stands frozen in the living room doorway, his eyes wide and frightened, his clothes hanging off his gangling teenage body like rags off a scarecrow._

_His father had said some things and John had said things back - things you can’t unsay - and now it’s only the impenetrable silence before the hangman’s noose tightens around his neck._

_John just stands there and watches his father’s shadow, caught in that sickening place where he’s not sure if he’s doing the right thing or just throwing himself into the abyss for no reason and with no guarantee that he’ll learn he can fly._

_Finally his father’s voice is pure ice._

_“If you walk out that door now, don’t ever bother to come back.”_

_And so John hadn’t._

 

\-------

 

There was a break in his awareness again - a murkiness too oppressive and claustrophobic to be sleep, just a kind of staleness settling over the senses - and when he nodded awake he was in the gate room, the golden glow of the glass painting edging the world with warmth. Everything was so quiet.

It was… strange. He was sure he wasn’t awake, but it wasn’t the disconnected, shifting state of consciousness from before either. For one thing he was in a tremendous amount of pain yet again, which, as bizarre and frankly unsettling the other sort-of dreams had been, he hadn’t felt for a while.

He sighed, using his bound hands to push up into a sitting position, back resting against the glass painting. Looking around he realized that what he could see out the windows had to be water. The ocean; the city was still underwater. As if to underscore the point, a huge shadow glided by - a whale, outlined by the city’s lights, the only illumination here in the deep.

“That’s right, I never did get to tell you about the whales, did I?”

John was almost afraid to turn his head to where the voice came from, just in case there would be no one there. The figure standing there was smiling a very familiar lopsided smile, though, solid and real, the orange jacket unmistakeable.

“Rodney,” he said.

“Sort of,” Rodney allowed. He looked sad.  

“Is this some kind of - is it magic? You’re not… Right. I’m still just dreaming, aren’t I.”

Rodney sat down beside him, their shoulders brushing. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“Great. Just… great.”

Had John been twelve years old, this would be the moment where he started weeping in sheer helpless frustration. As it was, he leaned his head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling, blinking too quickly.

“Hey, hey, hey, don’t give up _now_ ,” Rodney said, touching his hand to John’s bound ones. “We’ve gotten this far, don’t you dare capitulate before I get there.”

His thumb brushed back and forth over the back of John’s hand. John looked at it for a second, then let his head rest on Rodney’s shoulder, a tiny collapse of a gesture.

“I’m not sure how much longer I can do this,” he mumbled.

“Quitter talk,” Rodney declared, twining their fingers together. John let out a huff of laughter, unexpectedly drudged up from somewhere deep in his chest. “Listen, this habit we’ve gotten into of saving each other’s lives? It has been working out really well thus far, you can’t chicken out on me now that it’s my turn.”

In the silence John thought about the city drifting on without him, about never hearing Rodney laugh ever again. He had to blink a bit again.

“I’ll find you,” Rodney said quietly. “Just give me a little more time.”

John sighed into his shoulder. “I know,” he said. “I know. I’m just not sure that _I’ll_ be…”  
He was so tired. Maybe if he shut his eyes for a while it wouldn’t hurt quite so…

“No. Come on, John, stay with me here.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

“John. John, please - “

But John was already leaving.

 

\-------

 

_And then, finally, mercifully, there is only sleep, and darkness._

 

\-------

 

“Sheppard - John. Come on, please.”

Wonderful. As if things weren’t shitty enough already, his brain had apparently decided to subject him to a last goddamn moebius strip of a dream. John turned his face away, allowing himself a long-suffering sigh, then opened his eyes in surprise when someone shook his shoulder frantically.

“John!” No, that really _was_ Rodney kneeling beside him, eyes wide and terrified. “John, are you -”

John groaned and let his head thump back to the floor. “Took you long enough,” he murmured, turning a little into the hand being placed on his forehead. Rodney’s palm felt very warm. Cold metal brushed feather-light against his wrists, and with a snip his hands were finally free again.

“Well, that probably means no… significant... brain damage, thank god,” Rodney said under his breath. Then, a bit louder, “Yes, I’m… I’m sorry about that. I… it’s… are you okay?”

John slid his eyes open just enough to look up at him.

“Sorry, dumb question. Here, drink this.” He held out a small glass vial before he realized that John’s hands were shaking too badly to actually take it, then held it to his lips himself.

John obeyed, having a brief moment to notice the taste - like every reckless chili dinner taken on in misplaced bravado and which left your tongue numb for days - before he started coughing his lungs up.

“Uh, yeah, it can take you like that, sorry,” Rodney said, his hands moving nervously across John’s shoulders.

“What the hell was that?” John hissed, blinking tears from the corners of his eyes.

“Salamander blood. And some other stuff to make sure it doesn’t burn straight through your tongue and - you know what, nevermind. We’ve got to get out of here.”

John was about to point out that he could barely stand and that a daring escape seemed overly optimistic under the circumstances, when he realized that the warmth had spread from his mouth and out into his limbs, itching in his fingers and toes.

“It should keep you going for long enough,” Rodney said. “We left the jumper right outside the base, it’s not that far. Just… whoa there, take it slow!”

With Rodney’s support John managed to get to his feet and stay there. The numbing warmth coursing through his body had reached his chest, banishing the pain. “Who’s ‘we’?”

Close up, McKay didn’t look too fit for fight either, pale and unshaven with dark circles under his eyes. A gun of Genii design he must have picked up along the way was tucked into his belt. “Me, Teyla, some of Teyla’s terrifying friends, I didn’t really interview - not important, we need to go.” He gave John’s shoulder one last parting pat, then trotted over to the door and stuck his head out into the corridor. “The coast is clear, the diversion must have worked out. Come on.”

John had had some vague idea that he’d been kept in an underground bunker, but he’d obviously failed to get the magnitude of it. As Rodney half-dragged him out from the corridor and onto a walkway, it became clear that this place was only a bunker in the same way the Royal Palace was a neat piece of real estate with some fancy carpets.

“How far down does this _go?_ ” John asked, glancing down into what looked like an unending spiral of ledges and doorways carved out of the stone, crisscrossed with walkways and complicated-looking pulley systems.

“Really far.” Rodney had taken out his tablet and was tapping desperately on it. “It’s one of the oldest Genii cities, they abandoned it a long time ago - ostensibly, anyway. Okay, so we need to go… up. Definitely up. Uh.” He squinted at the tablet for a second and then grabbed John by his sleeve. “This way.”

For a while it actually went really well. Suspiciously well, as John realized in hindsight; the corridors they hurried down were all quiet and abandoned, though there were red lights blinking along the walls and a dull, blaring alarm somewhere far away.

“Shouldn’t there be guards?” John asked, still light-headed and buzzing with warmth from the salamander blood.

“This base is supposed to be a secret,” Rodney said, starting to sound out of breath. “They’ve got to keep the number of troops as small as possible to avoid drawing attention. Plus, they’re probably busy.”

“Busy with what?”

“I, uh, kind of planted a couple of spells around the main watchtower. That should draw most of their attention.”

“What spells?”

“Let’s just say that some of them might retain an appetite for flies even after they turn back,” Rodney said with grim satisfaction. “And - hang on, do you hear that?”

John _did_ hear that. The unmistakable sound of rapidly approaching voices was coming from further down the hall. He met Rodney’s eyes.

“In here,” Rodney mouthed, and they both snuck through the first doorway they could find.  

“Shit,” John said, realizing they’d run into a dead end.  

“Well, this is bringing back memories,” Rodney said weakly. The soldiers were close enough now that John could start making out individual voices.

“He’s not in the cell,” said one of the soldiers, out of breath and with panic sending his voice into a squeaky register. “Oh god, Kolya’s going to _kill us_ , ma’am.”

“Keep your wits about you, boy. He said to secure the prisoner, as a corpse if we have to, and that’s what we’re going to do,” the officer said. “He can’t have gotten that far, let’s search through here.”

“We’re not going to be able to sneak past them, are we?” Rodney whispered. “There’re only two exits, they’re bound to have them covered.”

“Probably.”

There was a long moment of McKay staring into thin air - John could practically hear his brain kick up a notch - and then he made a face.

“Okay, then.”   

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a piece of chalk.

“What are you…”

Giving no sign of hearing John, Rodney started drawing on the concrete wall, complicated looping shapes that made John’s eyes water just trying to make sense of it all and which Rodney was making without lifting the chalk even once. When he was done he stood back and narrowed his eyes at it. “Well, that’ll have to do.”  He set course for the open corridor.

“McKay!” John hissed, trying to hold him back. “What the hell are you -”

Rodney tugged free and waved frantically. “Hey, peabrains, over here!”

The officer’s head shot up, and the whole squad lifted their weapons.

“There they are! Get them!”

“McKay, if this doesn’t work, so help me... “ John muttered, as Rodney practically flew past him and over to the sigil and the Genii closed in.

“If this doesn’t work, we’ll both be dead. Stand back!”

“I’ll figure out how to become a ghost just to haunt your sorry -”

The first soldier rounded the corner. Rodney whispered a few words under his breath and put one of his hands squarely in the middle of the symbol, reaching the other towards the soldiers.

Nothing happened for a second, and then a few of the soldiers fell to their knees, screaming in terror and flailing their hands about wildly before going still. Rodney bent double under a sharp gasp of pain, clutching at his head. John felt his eyes widen and was about to dart over to him, but the remaining Genii stood there with their weapons pointed right at them. The woman who was obviously the superior officer paled when she saw the sigil Rodney had drawn on the wall.

“It’s another wizard,” she said thinly. “Shit. _Shit_. Go. Go, you idiots, get backup! I’ll hold them up here as long as I can.”

The other Genii looked at each other for a moment, torn, then did as they were told after she sent them a glare. The officer stood there alone, shaken but determined as she gestured at them with her rifle.

“This doesn’t have to be hard,” she said, glancing over at Rodney where he was still whimpering faintly. “Kolya wants you alive. Just come quietly and no one needs to get hurt.”

She took a few steps towards them. John moved in front of Rodney.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” John rasped. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

“Be sensible,” she said, pointing the gun meaningfully at John’s knee. “Kolya only wants you alive, he doesn’t care if it’s in one piece.”

John smiled his most disarming smile, calculating wildly behind it. He opened his arms as if in surrender and took a step forward - not far enough to be threatening, but enough for him to be able to close the distance. “Well, when you put it like that - ”

And he lunged forward, knocking the rifle out of her hand and bowling her over onto the concrete floor. She yelled out in surprise and pain, scrambling for her weapon. John tried to grab for her arm but his muscles had turned to jelly with the fall. She grasped the rifle and turned it on him, eyes brimming with blind panic and her finger moving to the trigger, instinct overriding her orders and -

“John!”

A loud bang,  and suddenly the unmoving bulk of the Genii flopped over John, who at this point could do nothing more than collapse under the weight and make wheezing noises. After a second he managed to shove her away from him, and once she landed on her back with a thump John could see the surprisingly neat hole in her temple and the empty stare of her eyes.

“Did that - are you okay?” Rodney said, standing stock still with the gun clutched in his hands. He looked like he was about to throw up.

“Yeah,” John said, getting to his feet. “Uh. Well done. Maybe I should take...”

“Yes, yes, good idea,” Rodney babbled, handing over the gun as if it contained unpredictable explosives. He swallowed hard a couple of times, then said: “That… wasn’t all that different from shooting at the bottles, actually. Which, well. That’s unsettling.”  He noticed the way John was looking at him, and it was as though he came back into focus. “I’m fine, let’s just get out of here.”

The gun was empty; John lobbed it into a far corner. He checked the rifle, but the barrel was slightly bent from being smashed twice into hard concrete - he muttered a curse under his breath.

Rodney wobbled, John steadying him under one arm as they rounded the next corner.

“What the hell happened there, Rodney?” John demanded, not letting go of his shoulder.

“I’ve - ow, god fucking damn it - I’ve used too much magic in too little time,” Rodney wheezed. “Not used to it anymore, takes too much… everything. My head feels like it’s going to explode.”

“Are you going to be - ”

“ _I’m_ fine,” Rodney barked, though the cold sweat was still pearling on his forehead. “Come on, before the backup shows up.”

He lead them down another corridor before stopping at a door that looked bigger and heavier than the others. “This one,” he said. “It lets us get to the surface without ending up squarely in the middle of the excitement.”

John nodded, unspeakably happy that someone else was bearing the brunt of logical reasoning - grabbing Rodney’s jacket and trailing after him was John’s limit right now.

Rodney fished a small purple pouch from a pocket and extracted a pinch of a fine blue-grey powder from it. “According to the floor plan there’s a room halfway up the corridor,” he said, sprinkling the powder over the lock. He blew on it, and the powder melted away, leaving metal that was now greyed and giving off tendrils of frost mist.

“Stand back for a sec…” Rodney stuck his tongue out, covering his hand with his sleeve and giving the lock a sharp knock. It shattered, almost poetically, just a soft sad tinkling sound and then a drizzle of broken metal. “There we go.”

They went on until they hit the next door, where Rodney repeated the process. He muttered to himself as he pushed it open.

“It’s kind of weird they included this room, though - it looks like some kind of storage area but I can’t see what they’d need to keep - holy fuck!” Rodney said, jerking back and bumping into John. John leaned to catch a glimpse of the room over his shoulder.  

“ _Dry as a desert outside, no place to go, keep dreaming…_ ”

The wraith was shackled to a chair, facing what looked a lot like an oversized light bulb giving off a merciless white, shadows dancing on the bare concrete walls though nothing was there to cast them. He didn’t look very well. It was as if the light had been digging slowly into his skin until it was almost translucent, turning it a sickly pale yellow with darker veins poking through. Something unpleasant and vaguely gelatinous was dripping off him, gathering in puddles on the floor. The eyes were the worst though - whatever those eyes were seeing, it wasn’t actually in the room with them.

“Son of a…” John muttered.

“Is that your wraith?” Rodney whispered, huddling close to John’s side.

“Hey, he isn’t _my_ wraith,” John said indignantly. “It’s not as though I brought him home with me and went ‘look, he understands every word I say, can we keep him’, is it?”

“You know what I _mean_.”

“I… think so. He didn’t look quite as… corpse-y last time I saw him.”

The wraith didn’t look at them; his bulging too-pale eyes were fixed only on the light.

“ _Keep dreaming,_ ” he hissed in that same thin voice, “oh, _keep dreaming, there must be some other reason for… reason… think and… hope… **think...**_ ”

“Bonkers,” Rodney said emphatically. “Totally and utterly bonkers. So far around the bend you could use him to open wine bottles.”

“You may have a point.”  

There was a shattering but muffled _boom_ from somewhere above them. They must be getting close to the surface.

John eyed the door on the other side of the room and chewed his bottom lip. It would only be a matter of crossing the floor, and he’d never have to see or think about the demon again. Grabbing Rodney and sprinting away. That would be the smart thing to do.

That settled it, then. He sighed. “We shouldn’t leave him like this.”

“Are you _kidding me?_ ” McKay screeched. “He left you for dead out on an ice sheet, Sheppard, I don’t really think you owe him anything. We’re _not_ adopting a pet demon on top of everything, I’m putting my foot down here.”

“I’m not saying we should take him with us, it’s just - can’t we turn that thing off or something? No one deserves… whatever that is.”

Rodney glanced over at the wraith again, his shoulders slumping. “I suppose you’re right,” he sighed. “Give me a minute.”

He edged around the table with the light bulb while keeping every part of himself as far away from the wraith as possible. After a few swear words and some tinkling sounds, the lightbulb went dark.

When the light went off, the clasps on the chair’s armrests opened up, and the wraith collapsed to the floor without the bonds to hold him upright, a pitiful heap of limbs. His eyes stared unblinkingly at the ceiling.

“ _I know the future,_ ” he whispered. “ _Keep dreaming. No river, no water, darkness all around… the song returns for us, it will have us all again...”_

“Creepy,” Rodney said. “Creepy _and_ off his rocker. _Can we go now?_ ”

“ _The Queen, I must find my Queen, a husk without soul…”_

“Let’s.”

All of a sudden the wraith’s eyes focused, zeroing in on John with worrying intensity. He made a noise that could have been a laugh, could have been a death rattle.

“ _John… Sheppard,_ ” he ground out. “ _Why are you… freeing me?_ ”

“Good question,” John said, taking a couple of steps back and holding out an arm to make Rodney do the same. “I guess I just make terrible life choices like that.”

“ _Nobility… from a human. I would never… never have thought to see it._ _Your heart... “_

“Yeah, sorry, that’s off the market.”

This time John was almost certain the sound was meant to be a laugh. “ _So I see. What is the charming expression your kind have… out of the frying pan and into the fire?”_

Rodney laughed nervously. “Whatever you say, uh - I don’t actually know your name. Do you guys even use names? Anyway, we’ll just be -”

_“And you found the wizard. Of course. Does he know? Does your wizard know… what you did?”_

“Leaving,” Rodney said. “We’ll be leaving now. Come _on,_ Sheppard.”

_“My brothers… my Queen… I failed them all. It is too late.”_

A twang of pain moved through John’s brain, a high raw scream of grief and rage and surrender that didn’t need to go in through the ears. It lasted only for a fraction of a second, and even that was too long. From the way Rodney jerked next to him, he must have heard it too.

The wraith’s breathing was even weaker now. “ _So this is how I shall die… surrounded by your kind and your quiet, hateful, lonely minds. How… do you stand it? To be severed from yourself, dumb and blind like animals?_ ”

Another fleeting grain of meaning; the Hive, a thousand minds twining together, strands of melody melting into each other as you all become one song - _home_.

He literally eats people, John reminded himself. He might seem vaguely sympathetic in his dying moments of hivemind nostalgia, but he _literally_ eats people as a matter of course. He killed Sumner. He tried to rip your heart out. He sent weird creepy shadow monsters after Rodney. There are certain things that don’t lend themselves well to ‘forgive and forget’.

He grabbed Rodney’s sleeve. “Yeah, you’re right, let's go.”

Rodney was almost finished with the lock when the wraith spoke one last time.   

“ _Wait. John Sheppard, who… has no heart... who freed me. You… still have something… of mine.”_ The wraith reached one of his pale, unsettling hands towards John and crumpled it into a fist. With a slow, sick kind of movement the scrap of purple paper that the curse had been written on pulled itself away from John, hung in the air in front of him for a moment, then collapsed into ash that was gone before it hit the floor. “ _My debt… is paid. They will not find you again. Now leave.”_

Rodney didn’t have to be asked twice; he bashed the lock into metal confetti with his elbow and ran up the corridor, towing John with him. John didn’t look back.

 

\-------

 

Once they’d reached the surface they crossed an open courtyard at a sprint, entering the next building over as an explosion somewhere nearby spewed orange sparks into the night sky.

“This place is a goddamn maze even above ground,” Rodney muttered.

“But you know where we’re going, right?”

“Sure, sure, of course. Uh… to the left here. No, wait, it’s the right. Teyla will meet us in the main courtyard, she had a, er, rescue mission of her own, apparently.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t want to stand in her way. Second door to the right here…”

The courtyard was boiling, the clamour of the fight being thrown against the walls and echoing back to create a confusing cacophony of gunfire and screams and general mayhem. On several of the walls there were glowing, pulsing symbols like the one Rodney had drawn inside the bunker, and their various effects seemed to be serving as distractions in ways only McKay’s brain could conjure up. People running around trying to staunch the fires breaking out on their clothes, confused men and women stumbling helplessly around each other like they were suddenly blind, tendrils of shadow reaching out to grab their feet and pulling them away into dark corners with high, terrified screams, a suspicious amount of things going ‘ribit’ for a military base…

“You really went all out on this, didn’t you,” John said, slightly dumbfounded.

“I blew the equivalent of half of the state’s annual magical budget in one go,” Rodney confirmed, hauling John along as he kept running. “Okay, where would she… there! Teyla!”

Teyla Emmagan stood on the fringes of the fight, next to a sandy-haired man who was binding the wounds of several Athosians. Her eyes were scanning the fight with something that looked like slightly cruel satisfaction - it wasn’t hard to see that the battle was going their way. When she saw John and Rodney, her expression lightened to one of warm relief. She really was a little terrifying. Awesome, but terrifying. “Ah, Dr. McKay - Rodney. You found him. It is good to see you, John.”  

“Yes, yes, yes, this is all very nice” McKay snapped, “but we need to get out of here right now, the salamander blood only buys us so much time. He’s not out of the woods yet.”

Teyla nodded, absently throwing out a foot to take down a passing Genii before answering. “Then you should go now. We will cover your escape; there is still work to be done here. I can contact you after -”

One of the nearby gates slammed open and a small group of Genii barrelled through. John realized that one of them seemed familiar only seconds before Teyla glanced up and saw Sora. In a second her face went ashen and hard.

“ _You_ ,” she said.

For a moment Sora looked taken aback, but then she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin mockingly. “Finally. I knew we’d flush you out with that little move.” Her eyes betrayed a little consternation as she glanced around at the aftermath of Rodney’s spells. “...though I must admit I hadn’t expected you to bring half the forces of hell with you.”

“Where is Kanaan?” Teyla asked. “If you have hurt him -”

“Stand back,” Sora told the other soldiers, pulling out a knife. “This one is mine.”

Teyla stiffened. “I did not come here to duel you, Sora.”

“Tough luck!”

“I had no part in what happened to your father, you must know that. Let us simply talk - ”

Sora whipped forward, the knife just a glint in the air. Rodney gasped, but Teyla easily evaded the attack, letting the other woman’s own momentum do the work for her. Sora briefly stumbled, then straightened up into a fighting stance. John took a step forward - he wasn’t exactly afraid for Teyla, but it seemed wrong to just stand and watch - causing Rodney to grab his wrist in a death grip and hiss: “Sheppard, what the hell are you -”

“John, stay back. I will handle this.” Teyla lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes. “Sora, I am warning you. Whatever our friendship meant to you, it was precious to me. But if you will not stand down - “

Unsurprisingly, Sora did not stand down. She sprang up with renewed spite, slashing at Teyla in a way that suggested she’d let her anger encroach on her technique.

“Big mistake,” John muttered, letting Rodney pull him back against him.

“Take out your knife,” Sora growled, circling around Teyla like a feral dog waiting to leap.

Teyla shook her head. “I will not. This is not a honorable challenge; I do not accept it.”

Sora’s lip curled contemptuously, and she threw herself into another attack and then another, forcing Teyla to at least ward her off.

For a while they were simply a flurry of movement, Teyla fighting defensively in her careful, economic style while Sora was more or less striking like a human hurricane, her knife moving too fast for John to track.

It ended quickly enough, though - in one easy, almost graceful gesture Teyla grabbed Sora’s hand and twisted her wrist, forcing her to drop the knife. Teyla kicked it away, leaving a young Athosian woman to pick it up and stand there with it awkwardly.  

Now on equal terms, it took Teyla ten seconds to dodge every one of Sora’s blows until finally the other woman misjudged a punch, letting Teyla grab her arm just above the elbow and toss her to the ground in one rather spectacular throw. Sora made a lightening quick attempt to get away and back to her feet, but Teyla planted her knee firmly in her back before she could do it.

“Where is he?” Teyla asked, her voice vibrating with barely contained rage.

“If you think I’m going to tell _you_ , you stupid fucking - aaah!”

Teyla had wrenched the other woman’s arm on her back in a way that made John’s shoulder ache in sympathy. Sora struggled feebly, but stopped when Teyla tightened her grip even more. In the background Sora’s men were briskly relieved of their weapons by a group of hard-faced Athosians.

“Luckily for me,” Teyla said, “you will come along and help me find him. Halling!”

The tall, sandy-haired man looked up from the wound he was binding, lifting an inquisitive eyebrow.

“Tie her up and prepare her for transportation. She is coming with us.”

Halling shrugged and waved for another healer to take over. Teyla gave an extra twist before letting go, leaving Sora a gasping mess on the ground while Halling tied her wrists together.

“In the unlikely case that I ever do anything to piss her off,” Rodney whispered to John, “just… remind me that we’d like to stay on her good side, would you?”

“You’ve got it.”

Teyla touched her split lip and made an annoyed sound at the blood. She walked up to Rodney and John again. “We should pull back from this position as soon as possible. There is no way of knowing whether they managed to send a distress signal before Rodney’s spells took out their communications.”

“Right,” Rodney said awkwardly. “So… you haven’t found him yet, then?”

Her expression went stony. “No. But we will. My people are combing through the entire facility. We are not leaving without him.”

 _Find who?_ John thought for a second, but then Teyla turned to him and wrinkled her brow.

“The wraith spell,” Teyla said, tipping her head on one side. “It is no longer there.”

Rodney’s hand tightened on John’s arm. “No,” John confirmed. He was going to say something more, but his brain was all out of gas, so he just shrugged helplessly instead.

Teyla put her hand gently on his forehead, and the furrow between her brows deepened as John blinked at the unexpected touch. “Rodney, I think you are right, you should leave before the salamander blood stops having an effect. We will send a small group with you to your ship, and then - ”

She was broken off by an ear shattering explosion that was closer than the others, and pieces of a nearby wall rained down over them, acrid smoke staining the air. A new group of Genii soldiers stumbled through the resulting hole, falling over each other in their race to flee whatever was coming after them.

One of the soldiers stopped when he caught sight of John, his eyes bulging. “Hey, isn’t that - that’s the one Kolya is - ”

As he shouted after the others to no avail, a surprisingly small figure strode out of the smoke, walking up behind the him and -

There was a crunching sound, and the Genii toppled forward with an agonized groan, clutching his head. His assailant peevishly waved away the remaining smoke, revealing a familiar face.

Kanaan was breathing heavily, wielding a short plank the way you might a war hammer. He still had a few grenades hanging from his belt.

“Oh dear,” he muttered as he noticed the blood on the plank, then kicked the Genii squarely in the gut when he tried to get back up.

“Kanaan.” Teyla stared at him.

“Teyla.” He said her name on a sigh of relief, taking a step towards her, then shuffled his feet a little bashfully and tried to hold the plank behind his back as inconspicuously as possible. “I… decided to take matters into my own hands for this last part.”

Teyla’s smile rose on her face like a sunrise as she walked up to him. “I can see that.”

He noticed the cut on her lip, his eyes widening. “Are you hurt?” He gingerly touched the corner of her mouth, right over the blood. “Halling should look at this.”

Teyla actually chuckled, tilting her head into his touch. “Kanaan, I assure you, it is merely a scratch.”

“Are you sure?” he insisted, looking at her like he was afraid blood poisoning would claim her right there on the spot.

She gave a snort of laughter. “It is still a mystery to me how one man can contain so much worry. It will be _fine_. You are the one who has been held captive - are you well?”

“I have not been _that_ captive,” Kanaan said awkwardly. At her raised eyebrow he clarified: “They have not treated me badly.”

Apparently unable to come up with any response to that, Teyla just shook her head slowly again, in what looked like mingled disbelief and affection.

Kanaan glanced away all of a sudden, his expression strange, almost shy. “...you came for me.”

Teyla looked like she’d been slapped. “Did you not think I would?”

“I knew you would,” Kanaan said, so earnest that John almost got a little embarrassed for him. The poor kid really had it bad. Teyla reached out and took his hand, clutching it tightly in hers. “I simply worried that… I did not expect all of you to…”

“You are one of us. Nothing can change that.”

“I…” Visibly giving it up as a bad job, Kanaan simply closed his eyes and leaned their foreheads together. She lifted his hand and kissed the palm.

“Thank the Ancestors, _finally_ ,” Halling mumbled next to them, but his expression was soft. Sora tried to use his distraction to stomp on his foot, and he absently kicked her legs out from under her and lowered her none too gently to the ground, still with that dreamy look on his face. “I was beginning to fear they would keep up that sad dance forever.”

“Trouble in paradise, huh?” John said. Halling made a face that clearly telegraphed ‘you don’t even know the half of it’.

Kanaan pulled back, perhaps upon realizing that a battle field was not the ideal time for prolonged romantic overtures. “Um. I assume you have a plan? Is there something I can do, or…”

“Yes - go and round everyone up, we are leaving. Tell them to hurry.”

Kanaan hefted his plank and nodded, setting course for the other end of the courtyard, where the fight had mostly petered out, the Genii lying in cursed heaps all over.

As if on cue, a dizzy spell shook up John’s head, making him lean more heavily on Rodney, whose barely controlled panic immediately flared up again.  

“Shit. We really, really need to get going,” he said. “And no, don’t even try to tell me it’s not as bad as it looks, humans are not supposed to be the shade of white you are right now, I am _not_ in the mood for senseless heroics.”

John obediently didn’t try, instead groaning and letting his forehead rest on Rodney’s shoulder until the world was the right way up again.

“Yes, we will retreat as soon as possible too. Rodney,” Teyla said, putting her hand on his arm and squeezing. “We could never have hoped to even attempt this without your help. _Thank you._ ”

Rodney looked taken aback. “Yes, well, I’m glad you found your... your _thing_ as well,” he mumbled, gesturing vaguely at Kanaan’s back.  

With a sigh of relief Teyla nodded and glanced over Rodney’s shoulder - and then her smile froze.

“Oh no.”

When they turned, they saw it too.

The whiteness of the airships was obscenely bright against the night sky. There were three of them, flying in a loose formation - they seemed dreamlike, graceful as they flowed towards them, deceptively small at this distance. John had seen enough to know that each of them carried enough firepower to blow this place to bits.

Rodney swore impressively under his breath, adding a few words to John’s vocabulary in the process.

“Well, I guess they did manage to send for reinforcements,” John conceded. “That’s that cleared up. How long do you think we have until they get within firing range?”

Rodney and Teyla glanced at each other. “I believe they seem closer than they actually are because of the contrast - perhaps half an hour,” Teyla said.

“Yeah,” Rodney said, “something like that, enough to evacuate all your people if you’re quick enough. Okay, see here.” Teyla made a small noise of surprise as Rodney placed a teal piece of crystal in her hand. “This is the information you’ll give the SGC, in case the versions from before get compromised. Just… look through it and decide how you’ll present it to them, okay? We can’t come with you, John really needs to go back to the city _now_.”

“Can you not - a small group could follow you and then fall back, if - ”

John shook his head. “Just go,” he told Teyla.. “We need you to warn everyone, no matter what happens here. Get your people to safety.”

Teyla looked from the crystal in her hand to the two of them and back again. She blinked quickly a few times. “You are right. Of course. Will you…”

“We’ll get to the jumper in time,” Rodney said, though it was hard to tell if he was reassuring himself or her. His fingers trembled where the were curled in John’s shirt.

“Bad pennies and all that,” John said. That, at least, made the corners of her mouth quirk up the tiniest bit.

“Use the gate _exactly_ how I showed you, all right?” Rodney said urgently, touching her arm with the hand that wasn’t clutching John. “There’s no point in surviving this only to end up as so much spaghettified - just make sure it’s all correct before you go through.”

“I will. Be safe, both of you, I - I will see you after this.”

“We’ll hold you to that,” John shouted after her. Rodney dragged him away towards the other side of the base.

 

\---

 

Rodney looked around to make sure they were alone before breaking open the door to the last building.

“Okay, so through this building and we’re good to go.”

The next door was already open, probably left ajar by a soldier too busy trying to survive to remember base protocol. When they stuck their heads in, the corridor inside was well-lit and quiet, overlooked here on the outskirts of the complex.

“This way,” Rodney said, sneaking inside and taking a turn to the right.  

A new alarm went off, startling John so badly that he almost tripped over his own feet. Outside he heard a new set of shouting voices - “The other team is in position - this is the last set of buildings, they have to be in here!” - sounding way too close to comfort.

“They’re coming at us from both sides, aren’t they?” Rodney looked even paler than before, face almost blue in the cold light.

“Well, at one point they had to remember that they had one brain between them. Can’t you just... cast another spell or something?”

Rodney’s laugh went through disbelief into mild hysteria. “Not really, unless I want my brains to leak out of my ears. John, I’ve used more magic in the last twenty four hours than most sorcerers do in a year, I can’t - there's just nothing more _left_ to -”

“Well, that’s typical,” John muttered, but Rodney sounded on the verge of actual tears - this was not a fit of false modesty, he really meant it. “Okay, we’re going with plan C, then.”

“Plan C?”

Already grabbing Rodney’s hand and starting to break into a run, John said: “We run like hell and hope it’s our lucky day.”

“Why do all your plans involve running from certain death?” Rodney groaned.

It worked too, right until they were in the middle of the last long stretch of corridor and heard voices about to round the corner in front of them.

“Shit,” John breathed, but there was a dark doorway to the right, and it was a long shot but at least they wouldn’t be standing out in the well-lit corridor…  

As someone shouted at the soldiers to split up and search through the grid, John managed to slip into the doorway just before the sound of thundering boots passed by, dragging Rodney with him out of the light and into…

A broom closet. A dead end. Of course it was. John didn’t even know why he bothered to get surprised anymore.

“You’ve got to be _kidding me_ ,” Rodney hissed, slapping his palm against the solid concrete wall.

The footsteps slowed to a stop. Standing in the door, outlined by the sharp, cold light behind him, was Ladon Radim.

John froze, watching the gun in Ladon’s hand. His brain raced to come up with some way they could still get out of this, but he was just _so tired_ , thoughts spinning uselessly around each other.

Ladon looked at them with his slate grey eyes, face a complete blank. John tried to push Rodney a little behind him, pressed up against the wall as they were. The corner of Ladon’s mouth twitched up, and John tensed himself for...

“They’re not here!” Ladon Radim shouted over his shoulder, and then he pushed the door mostly closed and turned to walk purposefully down the hall to join the rest of his squad. “Move on to the next quadrant. Commander Kolya is going to have all our heads if we don’t track them down.”

Rodney had a look of pure bewilderment on his face that neatly mirrored John’s state of mind.

“What the - you know what, never mind, not important, we need to get to the jumper. Down the hall here, that should be the last gate….”

Rodney tackled the last gate with the frost powder. There was a field on the other side, a buffer zone between the Genii base and the darkness of the looming forest. John wiped cold sweat off his forehead and shuddered in the breeze.

“The jumper is - ” Rodney said, then broke off as a shape melted out of the shadows in front of them.

“Leaving so soon?” Kolya asked, smiling a smile that had as much to do with amusement as a shark’s grin. “And here we were just getting to know one another.”

“I don’t know, I seem to remember our conversations being pretty one-sided,” John said in what he desperately hoped was a steady, warning tone. They were so goddamn close, of course something like this would happen. It was like he didn’t even know how his life worked.

Rodney looked between them, the purple bag with the powder still clutched tightly in his hand. “Who…”

Kolya lifted his eyebrows. “And you’ve brought friends. How nice of you.”

“You - you’re the one who took him,” Rodney said thinly.

“The one who ordered it, certainly.”

Kolya was both taller and broader than John, who at the moment was not even in the same neighbourhood as his best shape and had no weapons on him. You hardly needed a Rodney to figure out the odds of this one.

As if to underline the sum twice, Kolya pulled a gun from a holster under his jacket.

“You don’t look so well, my friend,” he said measuredly, lifting the gun. “Perhaps you should come back inside, lie down for a while.”

Rodney made a derisive sound and, to John’s utter horror, stepped forward to stand in front of him. “No, no, no, that is _not_ going to happen.”

“You would try to stop me, would you?”

“ _Rodney!_ ” John hissed, trying to yank him back.

“Maybe I would,” Rodney said, shrugging John off and lifting his chin in what managed to be equal parts defiance and terror. “Maybe I haven’t slept in a week and maybe the state of my sanity is rapidly approaching ‘crazy as a fox’ levels as we speak and maybe nothing’s making sense anymore, but you’re _not_ taking him.”

“Ah, you have got to love the classics. I’d have to go through you, am I correct? Over your dead body?”

“ _Yes._ ”

Kolya shrugged unconcernedly. “That can be arranged.”

Everything slowed to a horrible crawl as his finger started to press down on the trigger -

With a flick of his wrist and a whimper like someone putting a strain on an overextended joint, Rodney cast a spell that yanked the gun from Kolya’s hand and towards them, dropping limply into the grass. Rodney fell to his knees beside John, clutching his forehead. He looked even paler than before, hollowed out, and John briefly went to pick him up and see if he was all right before he registered Kolya throwing himself after the gun, and his brain overrode his instinct.

He rammed into Kolya hard enough to bowl him over, both of them crashing into the grass - the base of Kolya’s hand shoved against John’s face, a dull pounding pain. They rolled, a rough graceless tumble that ended with Kolya getting the upper hand with disturbing ease.

“More wizards,” Kolya hissed, as he pinned John’s wrist to the ground with one hand and wrapped the other around his throat. “I should have known.”

John tried to wrench his hand free to get at Kolya’s face, eyes, anything, but the bastard had his elbow pushing down on John’s shoulder hard enough that it was getting numb. As Kolya pressed harder, the world started to spin unpleasantly, becoming an incoherent blur of the green of the grass and the orange of the flames in the distance and the purple…

Purple?

He could barely turn his head but yes, there _was_ a glint of purple - the pouch of blue grey powder that Rodney had used to break open the doors. Almost all of the contents had trickled out, but if John could just stretch his arm out another inch...

John managed to get hold of a drawstring, picked up the pouch and upended the remaining contents over Kolya’s hand where it was wrapped around his throat - and then, with his last desperate gasp of breath - he blew on it.  

The scream was very satisfying, as was finally being able to pull in huge lungfuls of air as Kolya reared back, clutching his hand. John wrested himself free and picked up the gun Kolya had dropped, trying to get to his feet. He was standing unsteadily when something clamped down on his ankle, sending him toppling to the ground again. Kolya was hissing in rage, crawling over John to get the gun with his one good hand. John managed to hold him off until Kolya simply used his arm to smash his head into the ground, and everything went wobbly. Fingers were trying to pry the gun away from him and it started to slip -

A loud ‘whack’, and Kolya went slack above him. John turned his head to see Rodney pulling back his foot for a second kick - which turned out to not be such a good move, since Kolya managed to grab hold of his leg this time and easily tumbled him over on his back. Rodney gave a shout of mingled surprise and pain, Kolya pouncing like some big, savage cat and landing a punch on Rodney that made a horrible thudding sound that caused something to break a little in John’s head, then giving John a glancing kick to the temple when he tried to dive after him.

John fell backwards and lost his grip on the gun, wasting precious seconds scrambling for it in the grass until he found it again - he sprang to his feet and lifted it...

“Ah, ah, ah, not so fast there,” Kolya said, getting to his feet with Rodney held in front of him as a shield. He had his arm around Rodney’s neck, tightly enough that John could hear Rodney struggle for breath.  

Rodney’s eyes were huge and shining with fear but he kept quiet, barely struggling against Kolya’s hold. Kolya was looking out from behind Rodney’s head, studying John carefully.

 _He wants to see my face_ , John thought. _He wouldn’t expose his head like that if he didn’t. He’s a sadist. Use that._

John’s world went simple and spare and naked, stripped down to the bone. He was almost grateful, really.

“Let him go or I’ll shoot you.”

“For the record, I think he really means it,” Rodney wheezed, grasping feebly at the arm around his neck.

Kolya tightened his hold. “Please, just… shut up. You honestly put up with this?” he asked John, sounding genuinely puzzled.

“Let him go.”

“Apparently you do, for… whatever reason. Well. Drop the gun and surrender, and no one needs to get hurt. We can handle this like civilized men, can’t we?”

John didn’t move an inch. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the airships gliding ever closer, like oversized birds of prey. “Last chance.”

“Ah, you wouldn’t take the chance of hitting your wizard friend, would you?” Kolya said, pockmarked face splitting in a smile. His free hand - the one marred by blackened skin where the powder had hit him - slipped into a pocket, coming up with a switchblade. “But if you need any further incentive, I’m sure we can come up with something more… immediate.”

That was it, then.

Rodney’s eyes widened even more when he saw the look on John’s face, and John gave a slight nod.

“I’m not aiming at him,” John said quietly. He pulled the trigger.

He _could_ have aimed for the man’s shoulder, perhaps a foot, and it would probably have done the job. He didn’t.

Kolya’s head snapped back just as Rodney tore free and threw himself to the side, landing on the ground with a loud ‘oomph’. Kolya’s body swayed and then fell, the back of his head making a cracking sound as it hit the ground.

John’s knees gave out in a way that would have sent him face first into the grass if he hadn’t managed to brace himself on his hands at the last minute. He crawled over to Kolya’s body, marking with some satisfaction that his dying expression had been one of faint disbelief. Surprise, you asshole.

He started rummaging through Kolya’s uniform pockets, ears still ringing after the shot. It had to be there, he seemed like the kind of bastard who liked to have his power trip trinkets close at hand. It _had_ to be there.

“John!” Rodney said, kneeling down beside him and grabbing his shoulders. He had a few droplets of Kolya’s blood on the side of his face and what was rapidly becoming a bruise on his neck. John wished he had the energy to give Kolya’s corpse one last kick. “What is it, are you -”

John gave a ‘hah!’ of triumph. “Found it!”

Rodney looked from John’s face to his hand, which was clutching the phoenix amulet, then back to John’s face. “There is something very, very wrong with you,” he said shakily, pressing his forehead to John’s temple and putting his arms around him.

“Probably,” John admitted, closing his eyes and letting Rodney take his weight. Rodney rocked him back and forth a little.  The amulet rested warm and smooth in his palm.

Rodney’s breath ruffled unsteadily through his hair. “Let’s… let’s just go home.”

“Yes. Home sounds... home sounds good.” And that was the last thing John knew for a long time.

 


	10. In which there are several new beginnings

The gentle, comforting hum told him where he was even before he opened his eyes.

_John?_

“Mhm,” John agreed. “Hi there.”

A great tide of relief washed up against his brain, wordless but still carrying a world of meaning.   _you should tell Rodney._

Rodney was lying slumped over the bed with his head pillowed on his arms, demonstrating once again his uncanny ability to just pitch forward and fall asleep anywhere short of an active war zone. He was breathing slowly and deeply, but what little John could see of his face still seemed pale and drawn.

John poked his shoulder. “Rodney?”

Rodney slid one eye open inquisitively, then jerked back in his chair, hair standing up in odd tufts. “Oh. You’re awake.”

“I... think so.”

A wide, disbelieving smile trembled its way onto Rodney’s face. He ran a hand over his mouth, like he was trying to keep it down. “How do you feel?” he asked, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. “Does it hurt anywhere, or…”

John squinted thoughtfully into thin air for a while until he decided on: “I’m kind of hungry?”

“Well. That’s a good sign, I guess. I was thinking more in the direction of ‘can you still move your toes’, though.”

John wriggled his toes experimentally. They seemed about as functional as they’d ever been. He lifted his hands and flexed his fingers. If anything, he felt better than he had before. “Most of it seems in order. Ten fingers, ten toes, I’ll, uh, check the rest later,” he added, glancing at his lap. Rodney snorted, rubbing a flat hand across his phenomenally unshaven face. “Why? How long was I out?”

Rodney absently stroked the bruise on his neck that was now starting to fade away. “A couple of days.”

John sat up, realizing as the blankets fell away that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. A hurried examination assured him that at least he still had his pants on.

He glanced up at Rodney to say something about that, but Rodney’s eyes were focused on John’s chest. John peered down to see what was so exceptional about his nipples all of a sudden, and then he realized why Rodney looked so wooden. The city’s mark on his chest, previously a mere shadow across his skin, easy to gloss over, was now a dark, raw red. The branching lightning strike look suddenly seemed more reminiscent of blood poisoning, dark tendrils snaking around where his heart should have been. When he touched it it seemed even colder than before, stinging his fingertips.

“Uh,” he said, shaking his hand a little.

“It’s not dangerous,” the city said. “It’ll go back to normal soon enough, I’m sure.”

Rodney made a strange, scornful sound and tore his eyes away from John. Before John could ask what that was about, there was a tentative squeal, and Fred poked his head out from Rodney’s breast pocket. Rodney sighed and plucked him out, gently dropping him on the blankets while still studiously avoiding John’s eyes. When John reached out a hand for him, Fred flung himself forward and snuggled into his palm with what sounded undeniably like a cat’s purr.

“Hey there,” John said, pathetically grateful that at least _someone_ seemed uncomplicatedly happy to see him. He stroked the tiny, scaly head with one finger. “I hear you made some convenient blood donations back there. Thanks, buddy.”

Rodney looked resolutely at the wall and made a noise that was half throat clearing, half gulp. “Well, if you’re awake and all is well, I guess I’ll just...” A sloppy hand gesture towards the door, and then he fumbled for his jacket. “The city can keep an eye on you.” He disappeared out the door before John could react.

“...where’s the fire?” John asked the empty doorway.   

_don’t look at me_ , the city said. _he’s been really weird. I only came online myself yesterday_. _when you were... sick, I, uh, blacked out too, I guess. I don’t really remember much, except that it hurt. a lot._

“It goes both ways, then.” John swivelled his legs over the side of the bed and sat up, Fred scurrying up his arm and settling contentedly in the crook of his neck, tiny claws digging into John’s skin. “I do feel very peppy for someone who was apparently half dead a couple of days ago, though.”

_after I came online, I fixed you up a bit. you should probably eat something soon, though, I decided to not do too much with your blood sugar. fiddly stuff._

“Probably wise.” There were fresh clothes laid out by the side of the bed, folded with un-Rodneyish fastidiousness, but John wasn’t going to put them on before he’d had a shower. He felt like he was covered in a thin layer of grime and sweat from head to toe.

The phoenix amulet lay on top of the clothes, leather cord neatly coiled up. John took it and cradled it in his palm, noting that it still felt faintly warm to the touch, like someone had been holding it not too long ago.

_stars_ , the city said quietly.

“Huh?”

_that’s where my kind came from, to begin with. we were born in the hearts of stars. your forefathers would catch us like children trapping fireflies in jars and we would grant them... power. wishes. something. I remembered while you dreamed of the plains._

John slipped the amulet into his pocket and brushed the covers out of his lap. “What about the guy, did you recognize him?”

_it was - no, not exactly. but… not exactly_ not _either, if you see?_

“You’re completely on your own there. He seemed like kind of a dick, though, in a condescending primary school teacher sort of way.”

_mhm. John?_

“Yeah?”

The city took a long time to answer. _I’m really glad you’re not dead,_ it said eventually.

“Uh. Thanks. You too.” He stood up, bare toes against the warm metal. He wriggled them slightly, feeling oddly uplifted by the sensation. When he scratched his cheek he felt just how much his beard had grown while he was out cold. Oh well, back to the hobo look until he could find a razor, then.

_...also I’m really glad to get you home._

John took a minute to rest his forehead against the door frame and smiled. “Hey,” he said. “Me too.”

 

\-------

 

The next day John didn’t see even a glimpse of Rodney. He held off on breakfast until it became clear that McKay didn’t intend to join him, skipped lunch because there was no one to loudly complain that his metabolism must be glacial and that _some_ people thought having more than two meals a day was a staple of civilized society, and ate dinner by himself at half past one in the morning as he grudgingly realized that yes, Rodney was actually willing to forego food just to avoid him.

John poked at the food on his plate without any real enthusiasm. It was odd how you didn’t notice you’d gotten used to sharing meals with someone until you had to eat over boiled pasta without the moral support.

“Is he avoiding me, or…”

_he’s avoiding you_ , the city said. _he keeps checking where you are before going anywhere._

“Wow,” John said, twirling the salt shaker. “I’m not sure whether I’m insulted or flattered, considering the effort he’s put into this.”  

_if it makes you feel any better, he doesn’t want to talk to me either. this is as much as I’ve managed to get out of him._ It made a sound like a gramophone starting up.

**_recording one:_ **

“Rodney, I really think we should talk about - ”

“Go. Away.”

**_recording two:_ **

“Hey, at least we found him before - ”

“I will literally drop the salamander into your main processing core if you don’t stop that. I’m serious.”

**_recording three_ ** _:_

“But -”

“No.”

“If you’d only - “

“ _No._ ”

“Let’s just be reasonable about -”

“Okay, that’s it. Fred? Come out, buddy, I’ve got a job for you.”

“Ugh. _Fine,_ I’m leaving, suit yourself.”

**_end recordings._ **

“And they said he didn’t have any subtlety,” John said.

_I don’t like it. I checked the camera records in there, and he sat by your bed the entire time. once I got back online I could barely get a word out of him, he was hardly eating -_

“Oh well, that’s how we _know_ something real is going on.”

_I’m serious, John,_ the city said sternly. _he was completely out of it. give him a break._

John gave up on the pasta. “I don’t know, with the cold shoulder I’m getting I could probably start making snow angels any second now, it’s hard to not take that personally. I mean, I was gone for… however long that was, and now I’m back and everything’s _weird_. I thought...” He trailed off with a frustrated grunt and got up to shovel the rest of the pasta into the trash. He wasn’t sure what he’d thought, exactly.

The city was quiet for a beat. _so you miss him. that’s what you’re saying._

“Hey, hey, hey,” John said, dropping his plate into the sink. “Let’s not get crazy here.”

_uh huh._

John leaned back against the counter and glanced out the window. The days were getting longer, but right now it was a solid black out there. He scratched the back of his neck.

_oh, John_ , the city sighed.

“Shut up,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

_very mature_ , the city said fondly. _look, he has to come down into the gate room sooner or later, right? just... let him have some time to himself and it’ll probably work itself out._

“See, that’s not usually how my life works,” John mumbled, but he went down to gate room anyway.

 

\---

 

_he’s coming towards you right now, this is not a drill, he’s on his way._

John sprang to his feet and assumed what he hoped looked like a relaxed position next to the door, casually blocking Rodney’s main escape route. Rodney’s footsteps clipped down the corridor and then he entered the room, looking around warily, as if he were entering a lion’s den.

“Hey,” John said, leaning against the wall and folding his arms across his chest. Rodney turned and made a face as if the very sight of John standing there physically pained him.

“Hello,” he said tightly.

In hindsight John probably should have figured out what he was going to say beforehand. “So, uh… thanks for the daring rescue? I don’t think I got to say that before.”

At first the only response he got was a flat, dispassionate stare. Rodney still looked like he was running on nothing but caffeine and insomnia, but at least he’d managed to shave somewhere in there. “You’re welcome,” he said finally, his voice carrying all the warmth and emotiveness of two lead slabs smacking together.  

“No, really.”

“I _appreciate_ it.”

Okay. Not the best start to this conversation, then. “Oh, uh, good. Some of those spells were pretty impressive, by the way.”

“What do you want, Sheppard?”

Ah, one of _those_ questions. “Do I have to want anything?

“Is there another reason I’m being accosted in the middle of the gateroom?”

Some of John’s patience gave out. He kicked away from the wall. “Perhaps I’m trying to find out what I have to do for you to just _talk to me_ for five minutes.”

Rodney’s eyes narrowed dangerously and okay, that was a reaction, at least. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I guess... I’d sort of hoped you’d be happy that I’m back,” John said feebly.

“OF COURSE I AM!” Rodney yelled, throwing his hands up. “I’ve never been this relieved about anything in my entire goddamn life! What does that have to do with anything?”

“Really? Because declaring me persona non grata all of a sudden is a funny way of showing it!”

“I’m sorry if recent events have made me want some time to myself. As you can imagine the whole ‘life or agonizing death’ situation could be construed as stressful.”

“Well, for what it’s worth _I’m_ very sorry for almost dying. That was irresponsible of me,” John said.

Rodney took a couple of steps towards him, leveling an accusing finger at John’s chest. “That’s not the point! You bartered your heart to a _demon!_ ”

“Saving my presence, of course,” the city muttered.

“ _Still not the point!_ And you didn’t even tell me, I couldn’t do anything about it, you could have _died_ and I’d have no idea what was going on. If the city hadn’t managed to explain at least part of the situation before it went offline I’d never… it’d…” He stammered to an infuriated stop, apparently unable to express himself beyond a series of twitchy hand movements.

“Rodney,” John began, trying for conciliatory even though he wasn’t really feeling it.

“No,” Rodney said harshly, “no, I’m not going to calm down, I’m not going to be reasonable about this - except as it turns out I’m the only damn person around here who’s got more brainpower than the average maggot, so maybe I’ll have to ease up a bit on that one. Of all the irresponsible, reckless, _stupid_ -”

The city spoke up. “Rodney, it wasn’t actually his idea to -”

Rodney held up his finger like some great cosmic conductor telling the orchestra of the universe to shut the fuck up. “Oh, ho, ho, don’t imagine I’m not going to have a good long talk with _you_ when I’m done here. It’s just that if I direct the anger in more than one direction at once I might actually _spontaneously self-combust_.”

_whoa_ , the city said in the privacy of John’s mind. _he’s breaking out the pseudo-science, this could be bad._

John grimaced.

“If  hadn’t managed to get in contact with Teyla when I did…” He made a strange face, like someone noticing a kidney stone. “And the only reason _she_ could even guess where you were was because she interrogated the agents Sora had sent to sabotage her crystal ball signal, and it was a fool’s errand at best, and a - a - I don’t even know what at worst, but it seemed like it was the only way and -  You see, first you didn’t come through the gate with me, and that was bad enough. Then the gate _shut down_ , and I couldn’t get it to go back there, no matter what I did.  And then - _then_ the city started acting strangely - first it drifted in and out for a bit, and when it came back online it started babbling in Ancient and I couldn’t understand a thing it was saying and then it just… _screamed_. For five solid minutes. And after that it didn’t answer at all.”

John’s heart twanged like an out of tune guitar. “Oh. Shit.”

“Yes. Shit.  I - ”  Rodney said. There were spots of red high in his cheeks. His mouth twisted down rebelliously.

Everything in John crumpled all at once. “Hey. Rodney...”

“I thought you were _gone_ ,” Rodney said, voice wobbling dangerously in the middle of the sentence.  

For a while they just stood there looking at each other. John hadn’t noticed how close they were standing before.

“You’re right,” John said quietly. “I’m sorry, I should have told you.”

Rodney stuttered in surprise. “I - really?”

“Yeah. That was a really shitty situation to put you in, I’m… I’m sorry.”

“For what it’s worth he would have died if he hadn’t made the deal,” the city said meekly. “And he… he wanted to tell you. I told him to wait. I thought… I thought you wouldn’t… want me here anymore if you knew.”

Rodney narrowed his eyes. “And how did you figure I’d take it any better if I found out anyway and knew you’d lied to me?”

The city’s voice was so tiny that John could barely hear it. “I’m sorry.”

Rodney softened a little. “Well, next time just tell me, okay? I might - well, I can’t deny I’d yell a little, but how could you think… why wouldn’t I want to keep you - _just tell me_.”

“Okay,” the city said.

“...right. Okay, good.” Rodney’s hands hung limply by his sides, as if they weren’t quite sure where to be now. “I mean, then I guess I should apologize for the way I’ve been acting too. Being passive aggressive about it didn’t exactly - I didn’t mean to - I was just being… stupid.” Rodney glanced away, and he looked so deeply confused and miserable that John reached out to stroke his arm.

“No, you weren’t. You had every reason to freak out, nothing stupid about it. I’m not sure you could be stupid if you tried.”

That got him a small huff of laughter and a smile that was equal parts embarrassed and oddly sweet. “That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“That is… not as comforting as you seem to think it is, Rodney. So - we’re cool, then?”

Rodney scoffed, glancing over at John’s hand on his arm. “Hah. _You’re_ cool, I’m -”

And then, so quickly that John couldn’t really react, Rodney looked up, rested his hand on John’s cheek and pressed their mouths together, one soft lingering kiss that left John simultaneously warmed and baffled.

It seemed to be just as surprising to Rodney, who blinked dazedly for a few seconds, then went wide-eyed and touched a hand to his mouth in horror. When he spoke next his voice had taken on a sheen of manic chipperness. “Fine. I’m fine. Hm. Well. Sorry about that, I’m just going to go away now and work on my plausible deniability and we’ll never talk about this - ”

He started to move away. Well, screw _that_. John grabbed his shoulder and reeled him back in, cupping Rodney’s cheeks. Rodney’s eyes fluttered close as John kissed him, easy and thoughtless and so close. For a second Rodney almost kissed him back, his mouth shifting and softening, but then he tensed up and made a suspicious ‘hang on now’ sound in his nose. He pulled back, levelling a calculating look at John. John had the distinct impression of being disassembled and having all parts individually scrutinized, and suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for every mystery of the universe that had ever been subjected to a McKay’s full attention.

Rodney’s face brightened.

“Oh,” he said, like a man who has just realized the meaning of life, the universe and everything and is frankly a little annoyed he didn’t catch on sooner, “oh, of _course_ , that makes sense,” and then his mouth was back on John’s, hot and eager and _happy_.

_whoa,_  the city said, as John closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around Rodney, _whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe I should just… I should go feed the salamander or powder my power relays or something, don’t mind me, I’ll just be leaving._

John didn’t really listen, too busy with the realization that Rodney’s hands felt very nice stroking through his hair like that and that hey, that was Rodney’s ass, close enough to touch, and those were John’s hands close enough to do so, wasn’t that an interesting coincidence. Rodney let out a sound that made all of John’s blood head south and shuddered against him. John pulled back a little to look at his face - Rodney’s cheeks had gone pink, his eyes wide and expectant. Unable to help himself John pressed his lips to Rodney’s again, and then again, until he really had to pull away a little to get some air. He leaned their foreheads together, closing his eyes to try to get on top of things, but then Rodney bumped their noses together and it all unravelled again.

Rodney cleared his throat. “It would be customary to ask ‘my place or yours’, but since your bed is right there…”

“Deal,” John said immediately, taking Rodney’s hand and guiding him over to the cot, where they got slightly delayed because John had to lean back against the wall and draw Rodney in close, pressing his lips against the soft skin of Rodney’s neck. Rodney made a sound not unlike a pleased cat and craned into the touch, then slid his hands around to the small of John’s back and searched out his lips again.

“What is this still doing here,” Rodney huffed after a while, tugging at the hem of John’s  t-shirt with more eagerness than coordination. “It’s standing in the way of scientific progress.”

John raised an eyebrow. “Right. _Science_. That’s what they call it where you’re from?”

“Well, I’m a scientist. Technically everything I do can be science if I write it down afterwards. _Do_. Heh.”

John laughed helplessly and fumbled the t-shirt over his head, dropping it carelessly on the floor, then stood there awkwardly for some long, crowded seconds while Rodney stared at the mark on his chest again.

“It’s not -” he began, but the corner of Rodney’s mouth quirked up and he reached out, covering the mark with his palm in one light touch. His hand felt warm, almost electric against John’s skin, sending tingles through his chest in a way that was either exhilarating or terrifying, he couldn’t decide. It reminded him of flying, somehow, on the really good days.

It felt strange to breathe, too light, too easy, like inhaling fireflies.

“C’mere,” Rodney mumbled, steering them both over to the cot and carefully urging John to lie down, following him as well as the tiny space allowed. John slid his hand under Rodney’s shirt and felt the soft sweet swell of his stomach, the slight scratchiness of chest hair.

“Hey,” he protested weakly. “Fair’s fair.”

“Huh? Oh, right.” Rodney removed his shirt, then levelled a speculative look at John’s trousers and touched the top button with a raised eyebrow.

“By all means,” John said, shimmying a little to make it easier to reach. Rodney’s breath caught a little when he pulled down the fly and the back of his hand brushed against John’s hard cock. John swallowed. “Um… let me just - it’s kind of cramped in here - ”

“Right, right, of course,” Rodney babbled, getting out of the cot and giving John the chance to get the trousers off, watching like he was afraid there was going to be a test later and he better remember it all. John leaned up and placed a kiss to the center of his chest, so endearingly out in the open. Rodney gave a sound that was almost laughter, stroking his fingers through John’s hair. John craned into the touch and tipped his head back to look up at him.

“This is cool, right?” John asked, just to be completely sure.

“No,” Rodney said sternly, leaning down to kiss him soundly before kicking off his pants and then hurrying back into the cot, “this is _awesome_ , don’t ask stupid questions, you’re not fooling me anymore, your game is up.”

John laughed around a kiss and pulled Rodney down to lie flush against him; he couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t get enough of kissing him or the curious touch of his hands mapping out his chest or the soft sounds he made, comforting and thrilling both in some deeply pivotal way.

Rodney moved down, kissing the mark on John’s chest with light sweet touches, and John stopped thinking in words for a while.

And later, much later, when he was falling asleep with his face against Rodney’s neck, listening to his breathing settling down, it was with the all-encompassing knowledge that all those wrong turns he’d made might finally have taken him home.

 

\-------

 

John woke up in a long, slow revelation of warmth, his body feeling soft and yielding, like it belonged to someone else. Rodney sighed in his sleep and burrowed further back under John’s arm. John’s tiny cot wasn’t really built to hold two grown men, but with John’s back resting against the wall and Rodney tucked closely all along his front it worked pretty well.

Rodney didn’t snore; he occasionally let out small snuffles, but nothing more than that. It figured that the only time he didn’t make much noise was in his sleep. John rested his forehead against Rodney’s shoulder, pressing his lips to soft, pale skin.

“Mmm,” Rodney said, so John did it again, leaving kisses from the tip of his shoulder to his jaw, mapping faint freckles all the way up to that spot under his ear that had made him gasp out loud last night. Rodney stretched sedately and fumbled one hand behind him to stroke John’s hair. “Mhm, Hey. I don’t remember ordering wake-up service,” he said, laughter smothering his mock-complaint when John scraped his teeth over his shoulder.

“Such is the quality of this establishment; we predict your wants and needs before you even know you have ‘em.”

“Oh _really_ ,” Rodney squirmed under his hand as John trailed fingers over his waist, “if that’s so, how come I’ve never woken up to bacon and coffee in bed, huh?”

John’s cheeks felt strange. He hid his face in Rodney’s neck until he could get the smile under control. “Well, if it’s really bacon you’re craving right now, I could get up and - ”

“No, no, no, that’s fine, bacon can wait, I think I like you better.”

“Aw shucks, you shouldn’t say things like that if you don’t mean ‘em, McKay.”

“Hm, no, I’m feeling pretty sincere here, I’ll stand by that, I’ll tell it to anyone who cares to - _oh_.” His hand tightened reflexively in John’s hair as John stroked the inside of his thigh. His head fell back and John took the opportunity to suck gently along the exposed line of his throat, his jaw, then nosing the place where his hair was getting just long enough to curl behind his ears.

Rodney shimmied into a position where he could turn his head enough to kiss him. Even though that meant more of his weight rested squarely on John, that felt very much like the right idea. When Rodney let out a deep sigh that hummed with contentment, John threw a leg over him and pulled his hips in closer to his own. He wanted to tuck himself around Rodney everywhere, wanted to curl up around him and keep him here, thoughtless and soft-mouthed and safe.

“John?” Rodney mumbled against his mouth, eyes slipping half-open.

“Hm?”

Rodney looked at him for a long time with that intensely present unreadability John would never have guessed him capable of in the beginning, his mouth pulling down as if about to falter into speech. Then he obviously reconsidered, crooking a grin and reaching out to smooth a thumb over John’s eyebrow.

“Your _face_ ,” he murmured, nonsensical but cheerful, so John supposed it was all good. He snorted and craned his head into the touch, not quite sure where to rest his eyes. Rodney solved his problem by leaning his forehead against John’s collarbone, hiding his face from view and letting John close his eyes to nuzzle at his hair.

“You know,” Rodney said after a while, muffled against John’s chest, “as fun as outrunning certain death with you has been, it would be fine with me if we never, _ever_ did that again. I’m not sure my cardiac health would survive it.”

“Deal.” His fingers moved up and down Rodney’s back as he tried not to think about how fragile that kind of promise could turn out to be. “I still wonder why Ladon let us go, though. That did seem like an unlikely lucky break, considering how the rest of my life has gone recently.”

Rodney shifted thoughtfully. “Maybe it was just a power grab. Now that you’ve gotten rid of Kolya for him there must be quite a few openings to move up the ranks. He does seem the kind to backstab first and ask questions later.”

“Yeah, maybe.” John scooted down to let his head rest on Rodney’s chest, listening to the rhythm of his heart. It was much calmer than the crazy tic-tock of overtaxed clockwork you could reasonably expect from Rodney’s general disposition. He counted them out until the beats and the silence between became one sound, like the tide coming in and out. He listened for so long that he wasn’t sure if it was his own pulse or Rodney’s . “We didn’t get a ZPM out of this, did we,” he said finally.

“Nah.”

“Shouldn’t we be more worried about that?”

“I don’t care. We can find another one.” Rodney’s fingers idly brushed through the hair at John’s nape. John felt his dick starting to take an interest in the proceedings again. “We’ve got everything we need here for the time being, as long as we lay low. At least Teyla can finally hand over her info to the SGC. Halfway there.”

“Are _you_ looking on the bright side here?” John asked.

“Yes, I know, I hardly recognize myself either,” Rodney said dryly. “Next thing you know I’ll devolve into an optimist. What have I become.”

He laughed as John pushed him down into the sheets and kissed him, his arms coming up to wrap around him.

When the city barged in on them half an hour later, it resolved to add the gate room to the list of places it wasn’t going to turn its sensors on without knocking first because, honestly, there were some things organics should just keep to themselves.

After briefly including the communal showers, several labs, the top of the main tower, Rodney’s bedroom and,on one memorable occasion, one of the south-east kitchens in said list in the following weeks, it gave up.

 

\-------

 

Pale, feeble daylight seeped in through the gate room windows, as if spring was half-heartedly making a try for it and not quite getting off the ground. Rodney sat by one of the consoles fiddling with some wires when the city made a triumphant throat-clearing sound.

“Okay, I think I’ve got something for you.”

John - who had been leaned up half against the console, half against Rodney’s shoulder while dozing - slid his eyes open.

Rodney made an interested noise. “What’s up?”

“That thing you asked me to translate - you know, from the lab you found in the section with no power,” the city said. “I think I’ve made sense of it.”

“Okay?” John yawned.

“Don’t get too excited. I’m pretty sure it’s just a lullabye.”

Rodney scoffed. “A what?”

“A lullabye,” the city said patiently. “It’s a song. For children. Makes them go into standby mode, though I’m not quite clear on the mechanics there.”

“I know what a -” Rodney broke off with a huff. “Are you sure that’s it? It’s not just a deeper level of encoding or anything?”

“If it is, I certainly haven’t been able to find it.”  

The silence stretched out a little. “Well,” Rodney said dejectedly. “I’m not sure what we expected it to be, really. What are the odds that the Ancients left us something actually useful at this point?”

“But somewhere out there an anthropologist just had a heart attack of joy and didn’t even know why,” John muttered, closing his eyes again and shifting so his face rested better against Rodney’s shoulder. Rodney smelled really nice from the shower they’d taken that morning. John remembered what else they’d gotten up to in that shower and smiled to himself. His knees ached, but it had been worth it. It had been _so_ worth it.

“ _Anthropology_ ,” Rodney grouched, stroking the back of John’s neck and sliding fingers into his hair. “Please, you’re killing my libido here.”

“No, I’m not,” John told him smugly, kissing his neck. Rodney made a despairing sound of agreement and craned his head back to let John’s lips graze the edge of his jaw.

“Do you want to hear it?” the city said. “I think I should be able to play at least an approximation of it for you.”

“Sure, let’s hear it,” Rodney said, sitting up cross legged by the console like a kid attending story time and making John’s head slide from his shoulder and into his lap. John didn’t complain, especially when Rodney’s fingers returned to his hair.   

It was a slow, unintrusive kind of song, sneaking in through the hidden pathways of the brain and lodging itself there through sheer elegant simplicity. Something in it told of sadness too deep to pass on to anyone else, grief so far gone that it had become something new and basic, and, like a lullabye, it gave you the impression of having heard it somewhere before.

A sentence kept circling around in his mind - _the hand that reaches out and the song that reaches in, the hand that reaches out and the song that reaches in, the hand…_ \- Rodney’s voice reading the words in the half-darkness of the lab.

The music seemed to last forever - after a while John couldn’t tell if it had been only a few minutes, or if he’d been hearing it in the back of his head since the day he was born. It felt like sinking deeper and deeper into an ocean, like drowning in music. He shuddered and moved a little closer to Rodney, focusing on the warmth of him until the last tones finally died away.

“Well,” Rodney said eventually. “It’s evocative, I’ll give it that… but not very helpful, really.”

_The hand that reaches out and the song that reaches in._

“I don’t know, I feel kind of sleepy,” John mumbled, head still buzzing unpleasantly.

“Hey, don’t  go attributing _my_ hard work to the Ancients,” Rodney said.

“Fair.” John closed his eyes again and craned lazily into the touch. He’d taken a lot of Rodney-induced naps lately.

Rodney’s foot tipped back and forth, a sure sign he was doing some Serious Thinking. “Hm. It’s a lot of effort to go to just to make sure future generations can sing their kids to sleep, though. That lab was squirreled away like an acorn before nuclear winter, you’d think whoever hid it would reserve it for really important stuff.”

“Well, the music you found that lead you to the city had a purpose,” John reasoned. “Maybe… it’s a key or something, and we just haven’t found the lock yet?”

“Or maybe it’s just sentimentality,” the city said, obviously tired of the organics trying to find meaning in everything. “They weren’t above it, you know.”

Rodney made a dissatisfied sound but didn’t elaborate, foot still tipping.

“Soooo,” the city said after a while, swivelling its eyes around to study Rodney’s abandoned project. “What have you guys been up to while I decoded an ancient language of hitherto unknown complexity? Impressively. Decoded impressively. Was what I meant to say.”

“Napping,” John said.

“Hm? Oh. Trying to find a way to limit the power drain from this console when we make contact with a crystal ball,” Rodney said. “It’s… I don’t know. Unless we actually get a fresh new ZPM any optimization I make is pretty much quibbling about drops in the ocean, but - well, it’s something.”

“Every little helps,” the city agreed, lighting up a few of the wires from the inside like a tentative tongue prodding at a bad tooth. “Ooooh, I see what you did there. That’s very clever.”

“Oh, I am well aware.”

“And to think that the only tradeoff is a slight possibility of the whole thing blowing up spectacularly when activated.”

John pushed up on his elbow. “...what was that about blowing up?”

“A statistically insignificant possibility,” Rodney failed to reassure him, pulling him back down into his lap. “Don’t worry about it. It has practically never happened before.”

“I guess we’ll find out when Teyla contacts us,” the city said, as John pondered the fact that he’d reached the point in his life where his sexual orientation ran along the lines of ‘mad scientist’. “Should be any day now, it’s been almost a month. The smoke ought to be settling.”

 

\---

 

As it turned out the city had been right about that: the next night during dinner the city interrupted them to say that a crystal ball signal had started transmitting to them a few minutes ago. Once they’d hurried down to the gate room and established that the console was indeed not going to explode this time, they got Teyla up on the big screen.

Teyla’s expression was as poised and collected as always, though her hair had been allowed to fall into a state of casual disarray. It was hard to tell from the background where she was, but from the light coming from a nearby window it looked like it was morning there. She grinned widely. “John, Rodney. I am relieved to see you are both well.”

“Same to you.”

Rodney leaned forwards. “So you got out of there all right? The gate worked?”

“Thanks to you, Rodney. I got everyone to safety, and - ”

She was broken off by a door opening behind her and a figure rushing in.

“Teyla, did you see - oh.” Kanaan, damp haired and wearing absolutely nothing except a towel slung low on his hips, drifted into frame, then froze like a deer in the headlights. “Oh, I apologize, I did not realize you were…”

Teyla craned her neck to look at him. “I am sorry, I should have told you I was about to call them - I thought you were still asleep.”

Kanaan waved meekly at John and Rodney, clutching the towel to his hip with his other hand. “Um. Hello again.”

“Hi,” John said, waving back.

“Nice to see that neither of you mutilated yourselves horribly using the gate system,” Rodney supplemented. “All body parts present and accounted for. Good job.”

“Uh, yes, yes, we - I will just go and… not be disturbing anymore.” Kanaan leaned forward to plant a soft kiss on Teyla’s cheek, then darted out of sight, towel trailing after him.

John grinned at the flush on Teyla’s face. “Everything’s going well, then?”

She pursed her lips against a smile; happily flustered looked good on her. “It has been… most satisfactory, yes.”

“You do know he’s going to tease you about this for as long as you live, right?” Rodney said.

“Probably,” John admitted, because he was only human and when his little brother had been in his most teasable teenage years he’d been too sulky and earnestly unhappy to be any fun.

“Oh, it would be disappointing if he did not. Besides, I do believe I have some material to work with myself, should it come to it.” She looked meaningfully between them.

John’s ears did not turn pink, because he was a grown man. Rodney made a sound that was somewhere between a hiccup and a cough.

“Though seeing as you have the emotional intelligence of a gnat between you, I might find it in me to be kind enough to abstain,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “I am happy for you both.”

“Cool,” John said, strangled.

A long silence followed in which Teyla just kept up her knowing smile. Then Rodney said: “So what’s the plan now?”

She tipped her head on one side. “Of course we are still working on finding you that ZPM, but our success has been limited in the instability in the wake of the attack on the Genii base - I have some tentative gate addresses for you, but nothing more. Other than that my first priority will be to deliver your information about the wraith to the SGC. We are all but done formulating it so that nobody will question its origins. Then… hm. I suppose I better take a closer look at some of my contacts. Sora gave me - let us call it a new perspective. Perhaps she can even… help me.”

John was glad he wasn’t in Sora’s shoes in that moment. He doubted that Teyla would do any real harm - they had been friends once, after all, but perhaps exploiting that friendship in order to use Kanaan against her wasn’t going down in the history books as the smartest move ever.

“We will be keeping out of sight for a while, but if you need anything from me you _are_ to contact me immediately. I did not like leaving you behind on the Genii base.”

“Yes ma’am,” John said. She made a face at him and chuckled.

“Thanks again,” Rodney said. “I mean, if this works out we’ll maybe have saved the world a little. Not bad for a week’s work.”

Teyla laughed - a free, open sound that made the room seem a little bit brighter. “When you put it like that, Dr. McKay, it could be considered downright irresponsible for the world community if we do not continue this working partnership of ours.”

“It would be a criminal underuse of our potential, certainly,” Rodney said. “Best to keep it up.”

“Indeed. For world peace.”

Both of their deadpan expressions gave a little twitch as the image flickered out - just as Kanaan peeked into the room from a crack in the door, still wearing only a towel and one single sock.

 

\-------

 

They’d started hanging out at the top of the tower ever since the days had been growing longer, in the hope of catching at least a passing glimpse of natural light. Right now there was a golden tinge to everything up there, the sun as high as it was going to get.

Rodney, who had made good on his promise of bringing a pillow with him and thrown in a couple of mattresses for good measure, was sitting cross legged in his underwear in front of his box of Ancient gizmos, muttering happily to himself. He didn’t look up when John came in, so John used the opportunity to watch him work. A McKay contentedly wrapped up in Science - John always felt the capital ‘S’ was implied, if only to differentiate it from psychology, sociology and similar ‘quasi-mumbo jumbo’ - was a meditative sight.

After a while Rodney’s brow furrowed, and he glanced around. His face brightened as he saw John. “Oh, there you are. How long have you been standing there?”

“Half an hour or so,” John said easily.

“What? Why didn’t you - oh, ha ha, it’s the kidding. Hil-a-rious.”

“I do my best,” John said, sitting down beside him. “What’re you doing?”

“Oh, it’s really interesting, actually - remember this?”

He held up a green crystal-like thing that did indeed look familiar.

“It’s the personal shield you had in Skarby.”

“Well, it’s _a_ personal shield. The one I used before wore out. I found this the other week - I haven’t gotten it to work yet, but, you know. Everyone needs a hobby.” He put it down, pushing the box away with his foot.

John bounced on the edge of the mattress. “What’s with the mattresses?”

“Ah, I’m glad you asked. I’m not complaining about the company, but if I have to sleep in that cot one more night my back is never going to forgive me. And most of the Ancient beds are tiny. Like, really tiny. These guys must have been a lot shorter than I imagined. So, I had an idea.” He gestured towards the mattresses and some folded sheets. “Ta-dah. We make our own arrangements.”

John looked around the room, lent a honey-golden glow by the rare daylight. He had to admit that being able to sleep with his legs stretched out would be a welcome change. “I like the way you think, McKay.”

“Yes. Well,” Rodney said, inclining his head modestly. “Genius.”

John bent down and picked up a pillow. “Well then, Genius, give me a hand with this.”

When they’d distributed all the pillows Rodney thoughtfully studied their lopsided construction, poking the low pillow wall that served as a headboard with his toe.  

“Hm. That isn’t going to stay structurally sound like that…” He narrowed his eyes speculatively. “More pillows?”

“Definitely more pillows,” John agreed. “And some sheets to keep it together.”

“Daring design idea there,” Rodney said approvingly, scurrying off to fetch more materials.

Half an hour and some industrious construction work later, John stood back and surveyed the result - the sea of pillows, the blankets, the light drizzling down on it from the glass ceiling. It was the closest thing to a pillow fort he’d had a hand in since he was ten years old. He felt a swell of illogical pride.

“There,” Rodney said behind him, entering the room in disguise as a walking heap of precariously balanced pillows, “that should do it, don’t you think?” He dumped the pillows with the rest of them and then stood back, putting his hands on his hips and beaming.  

“Looks good,” John offered, a smile tugging at his mouth because Rodney was grinning as though he had personally erected a pyramid. “Though we ought to give it a test round,” he added, casually shuffling closer to Rodney’s side.

“Hm?” Rodney said, still smiling absently as he glanced at him. “What did you - oh god, yes, that’s the best idea I’ve heard all week  - and of course I’m always in close proximity to my own ideas when they form, so that’s saying someth - mmm.”

He broke himself off by kissing John, resting one hand at the small of his back and the other on his neck. John kissed him back as he edged his hands under Rodney’s t-shirt and slowly lifted it up, his fingers brushing warm skin the whole way. Rodney got where he was going with it and pulled back just long enough to shrug the t-shirt off before cupping John’s face in his hands and kissing him again, light and earnest, the softness of it almost unbearable. John closed his eyes and tilted his head to catch Rodney’s mouth better. His arms came up to wrap around Rodney’s waist, where he could stroke the broad, naked expanse of his back and then move down, to his hip and then his ass and his thigh and back to his ass again, kneading the solid muscle.

Rodney bit out a moan against his mouth, sliding one of his hands to bury his fingers in John’s hair with an urgency that seemed unusually thoughtless and impulsive coming from him; the want made John’s chest feel strange and free and open.

He scraped his teeth gently over Rodney’s bottom lip - and then everything went sharp and molten as Rodney gasped and tightened his fingers in John’s hair, pulling it.

John made an irreproducible noise and melted forward like a snowman being microwaved.

“Sorry!” Rodney said, immediately loosening his grip. “Sorry, got carried away there.” John’s nerves settled back to a faint twanging, still there like an itching down his spine.

John narrowed his eyes. “...do that again.”

Rodney blinked. “What? Like… like this?”

He pulled at John’s hair again, slower this time and a little harder, calculated. John bit his lip and moaned helplessly, his head tilting back, all his limbs turning warm and wobbly.

For a few seconds Rodney just stared at him, his pupils dilated enough that the blue barely showed around the edges. “Okay,” he said calmly. “Noted and awaiting further experimentation. Good.”

_He is memorizing this,_ John thought dazedly. _He is going to file all of this away in his weird mental sex catalogue for later use and I am going to_ die _._

But what a way to go, he added, as Rodney expression took on a definite overlay of smugness and gave one last tug, just a happy parting tease before licking a new kiss into John’s mouth and placing his hand down where John’s cock was straining against his trousers.

Since John’s knees were now too weak to keep him upright, he decided that horizontality was probably the way to go.

“Whoa,” Rodney said, laughing as John tumbled him down onto the mattress. A short, disorganized wrestling match followed, until John conceded and let Rodney end up on top.

“God, your hair is _ridiculous_ ,” Rodney muttered, still running his hand through it while following John down with commendable enthusiasm. “Stop that, it’s true,” he added as John laughed against his mouth. “All of you’s ridiculous. It shouldn’t work. It’s an affront to science.”

“That’s me; scientific aberration. It’s just the burden I have to bear.” John started to take off his t-shirt; Rodney waved at him, dissuading.

“Hang on, hang on, I’ve got this.” John gamely let his hands relax, resting them against Rodney’s back while he shimmied down, trailing light kisses down John’s neck and across his collarbone before ducking down and finding the strip of skin between John’s underwear and his t-shirt. He kissed his way up John’s stomach, nosing the t-shirt away as he went until it was gathered up under John’s armpits and he could rub his face against chest hair. “ _Now_ let’s get rid of this.”

The collar got stuck on his ear and tousled his hair even further, but in the end John managed to shrug it off and toss it over to the side.  

“I can’t help but feel you’re still ahead here,” John mumbled, cupping Rodney’s dick through thin underwear. It felt hot and heavy against his palm.

Rodney immediately went to work on John’s fly. “Thankfully that can be easily remedied.”

Somehow they managed to get John’s trousers off without losing contact between their bare chests. John kissed Rodney throat and then, wanting to make it easier on his neck to put his lips on Rodney’s chest, flipped them over. The move prompted a very interesting sound from Rodney.

“It should not be hot that you can do that so easily,” he panted.

Running his hands over Rodney’s sides, John pushed him down into the pillows and kissed the soft curve of his stomach, then fitted his lips around a nipple and sucked gently.

“God, John.” Rodney shifted under him, restlessly pushing up into John’s mouth.

“Mhm.” He placed wet lingering licks over the pebbled skin, rubbing the other nipple with his thumb. Eventually he slid his free fingers up the inside of Rodney’s pale, bare thigh, brushing just under the edge of his boxers and then even further up before trailing back down again.  

“This needs to come off,” Rodney said fervently, tugging at the waistband and lifting up to pull it off. “And that,” he added, dragging John’s underwear down his hips.

John tsked. “So impatient.”

Rodney threw his hands up despairingly. “Well, of course I am, I’m not _dead._ I mean, look at you, who wouldn’t be.”

John huffed. Rodney leveled a warning finger at him. “I don’t want to hear it, Sheppard, you’re not the one who has to look at you all the time. Not peeling all your clothes off at every opportunity is _my_ struggle, I would know.”

“C’mere,” John mumbled, pulling Rodney up to hug him close, unable to let go even when Rodney laughed into his neck and clumsily stroked his arm. He nuzzled into Rodney’s hair for a moment, then loosened his grip slightly. Rodney rested his arm across John’s chest.

They lay there looking up at the sky for a while.

“Can you fuck me?” Rodney asked, conversationally.

John’s brain came to a screeching halt. “Huh?”

“Because I think we’ve been laying the groundwork for weeks now - extensively, even - and I’d kind of like to see what all the fuss is about.”

They’d both tried it with fingers, of course - John had always thought ‘coming so hard you see stars’ was just an expression, turned out it very much wasn’t - but they hadn’t gotten quite that far before. An image flashed past John’s inner eye: Rodney under him, solid thighs around John’s hips, head thrown back and mouth open, his cock hard and leaking against his stomach as John moved in him.

“Sure,” he said over the pulse thundering in his ears. “If you want to.”

“I do.”

“Right.” John heaved himself up, hovering over Rodney and smiling down at him. Rodney reached out to cup his face and licked at his bottom lip, wrapping one leg around John to haul him in closer. John closed his eyes and enjoyed that for a minute, grinning a little when Rodney caressed John’s overarms and muttered something accusatory under his breath. Then he extricated himself and crawled down Rodney’s body to his crotch.

“Where are you going?” Rodney asked, squinting down at him, hands still outlining the shape of John’s shoulders in thin air.

“Gotta get you relaxed first, right?” John said, placing soft, open-mouthed kisses to the insides of his thighs, nudging Rodney legs a little wider apart with his forehead. Rodney groaned.

“Oh yes, nothing’s as restful as being teased to death by a cruel and relentless - hng.”

John had slid his mouth over Rodney’s cock, taking in only the tip at first, brushing his tongue lightly against the head. Rodney made a whimpering sound, his hands coming down to bury themselves in John’s hair. John closed his eyes and took him deeper, putting a little suction into it, moving up and down in slow, steady waves. He felt strangely and delightfully aware of Rodney’s thighs on both sides of his head, hemming him in; he moved so he could use a hand to pull one of Rodney’s legs closer to him and slide the other under his hip to his ass, squeezing it firmly. It gave him better control over the proceedings, letting him guide the movements of Rodney’s hips.

John sucked him slowly but thoroughly, feeling Rodney’s hips flex against his grip like he was enjoying the constriction of movement, like he was testing himself against the boundary and loving it when he met it every time.  

Something crossed John’s mind and he sat back, despite Rodney’s squawk. “Did you bring lube?”

“Huh? Oh, yes, of course. Hang on…” He stretched over and waved his hand around behind some pillows before closing his fingers around the bottle. John used the opportunity to run his hands through Rodney’s chest hair, which was a few shades lighter than the hair on his head.

“There we go,” Rodney said, dropping the bottle into John’s hand. John poured some of it into his palm, slicking up his fingers, then positioned himself better between Rodney’s legs. He ran his now wet fingers along the crack of Rodney’s ass, because it made Rodney squirm impatiently, then grazed the edge of Rodney’s hole.

“Ready?” he asked, glancing up at Rodney’s face.

“I’m past ready,” Rodney said. “I drove right through ready five minutes ago and entered the realm of get the hell on with it, population - oh, that’s good.”

John slid two fingers into him, moving them steadily in and out as he put his mouth back on Rodney’s cock, smiling around it as Rodney wriggled and panted. John sucked so lightly it was barely a tease. It was only a few minutes until Rodney was relaxed enough for John to add another finger, so he pulled off and licked his mouth before asking: “So how do you want to do this? Position-wise, I mean.”

“Well, I looked up a lot of different sources and cross-referenced them against each other - ”

“Of course you did,” John mumbled. Who else would talk about cross referencing while someone waggled three fingers in their ass. He was just surprised there weren’t any spreadsheets involved.

“ - and I’ve concluded that the easiest, logistically, would be me just lying on my belly. We can try the fancy stuff once we’ve got the basics down.”

“I think you should share these sources with me,” John said, pausing to suck a small hickey into the skin just over Rodney’s hip bone. “I feel like I could have some valuable input.”

Rodney laughed, breathless and giddy. “Now that’s the caliber of idea that ought to win you prizes.”

John patted Rodney’s ass. “This is all the prize I need.”

The snigger stuck in Rodney’s nose when John leaned down and licked the base of his dick and then traced the tip of his tongue up to rub under the head. John took him in again, working his lips harder against the shaft now, more insistent, the heft of it amazing against his tongue. He tried to time the rhythm of his fingers to his mouth, pushing deeper into him with each thrust. When Rodney was starting to sound suitably undone above him he ran a fourth finger around the edge of his hole, not actually pushing in but putting enough pressure behind it that there was a promise that he could.

Rodney came, and John kept him in his mouth, swallowing around him until he whimpered and pushed slightly at him. John pulled back and appraised his work. Rodney’s cheeks were flushed, his mouth rosy and lopsided and softened, all of him an uncoordinated sprawl against the sheets. Not bad. Not bad at all. And he was about to do better, he hoped.

He let Rodney come down, movement slowly returning to his limbs until Rodney cracked one eye open and grinned at him.

“I’ll concede that that was pretty relaxing.”

“Good to hear.”

“And it’s only round one,” Rodney sighed happily.

“Half time, then.” John stroked Rodney’s shoulder. “Come on, turn over.”

As Rodney did so he let out a pleased keen, stretching out on his stomach like a cat sunbathing in a windowsill. His ass was right there, full and curvy and inviting, so John leaned down to press a lingering kiss to one cheek before getting his fingers back into him. Rodney grunted approvingly and John pumped his fingers into him a little, as much to make sure he really was ready as to satisfy his own fascination. That soft, slick tightness was going to be around his cock any minute now. He swallowed.

When he was sure Rodney was as relaxed as it was possible for a human being to be, John quickly kissed his shoulder and then put his free hand on his ass, squeezing.

“Are we okay to go?” he asked

“Mhm, please, go ahead,” Rodney said dreamily.

Now that John was actually face to face with the situation, it felt a little more complicated than he’d expected. As he took his cock in his hand to lube it up he looked from the size of it to Rodney’s hole. It seemed a stretch.

“What’s keeping you back there?”

John murmured: “It’s all well and good in theory, but I’m trying to figure out how you actually do it right.”

“It’s hardly rocket science, Sheppard.”

“As far as I remember you’re not really into pain.”

Rodney made a conceding sound and reached back to pat John’s arm. “You’re right, you’re right, take your time.”

John lined up and tried to focus, testing with a little pressure forward and was reassured when he felt the give. He took a deep breath and went for it.

He pushed in tentatively, groaning as the head of his cock slipped into the soft, tight warmth of Rodney’s ass, then paused to let Rodney relax around him.

“Okay, that’s a little weird, but I think we’re good,” Rodney eventually informed him in a strangled voice. “Keep going.”

“Right.” John took it as gradually as he could, watching all of Rodney’s movements for signs of discomfort or pain, cradling his hips in his hands. It did look amazing, his own dick sliding into Rodney’s firm, rounded ass, all of Rodney laid out in front of him like the world’s greatest buffet. The only thing that could have made it better would be seeing Rodney’s face, being able to lean down and kiss him, suck his bottom lip until he keened.

Rodney made a small, stifled ’ah’ sound, and John stopped at once, stroking his hand down Rodney’s hip and pulling back.

“Are you -” John began.

“God, what are you doing, don’t _stop_ ,” Rodney groaned, mashing his face against his forearm and shifting his hips restlessly.

John pushed all the way back in until his hips were pressed against Rodney’s ass, grinding there a little. Rodney made another sound and yeah, okay, that was _definitely_ a good noise. Encouraged, John did it again, dizzy with how slick and open and yielding Rodney was, leaning down to press a clumsy kiss to the back of Rodney’s neck when he lifted his head.

“Do you want a moment?” John ground out. “Because I think I need a moment.”

Rodney let out a shivering laugh and pushed his hips back, just a little; John could feel Rodney’s body going slack and boneless as he moaned, like it was so good he couldn’t quite keep himself up any more. John bit the inside of his cheek and thought of cold things. Ice cream cones. No, wait, bad idea, you _licked_ ice cream cones and when Rodney did it it was _obscene_ because he was an asshole and mercilessly stabbed John’s weak spots at every opportunity. Frostbite, then. Cold showers. Ice bathing. Skarby.

John stretched it out, both because he wanted this to last, forever if possible, but also because Rodney had just come once and probably needed a while to get going again. He was determined to make sure there’d be a second orgasm in there somewhere.

Rodney tilted his head with a sigh and John got a glimpse of his face, his eyes closed and his eyelashes sweetly fanned against his cheek, his mouth open and the bow of his upper lip soft and reverent. The golden light divided his face in sharply defined planes and softened edges; for one second John got why some people turned to art just to catch one single moment.

_When I die_ , John thought, distantly, in a part of his brain that could still do words, _I hope that this is the last thing that flutters through my mind. That would make it all worth it._

After a while Rodney started to move against him with more determination, lifting his ass up and leaning back. John had just enough presence of mind left to adjust himself now and then, trying out a few different angles.

Eventually he must have hit something just right, because all of Rodney tensed up and he made a sound so loud that people in the capital  should be able to hear it. John blinked sweat out of his eyes and tried to find that spot again.

“There?”

“Ah - ah - yeah, right - holy fuck, John, _please_ \- ”

John had never heard him be this loud before, not even that one time he almost fell down from the kitchen counter because he came so hard that John had to scoop him up and crowd him back against it - and now his head was thrown back and his hips were moving back greedily to meet John’s thrusts. It set fire to every cell in John’s body.

Rodney pushed up just enough to snake a hand under him and down to his dick. He gasped, raw and sharp, as John caught glimpses of his fingers wrapped around his cock, whipping up and down tightly.

“Rodney,” John said, no other words in his head. It sounded hoarse and whispery.

“Don’t stop - harder, come on, please, just a little - ”

John complied, moving faster, harder, slamming into him and finding the right angle as Rodney moved under him.

“John - ah, John, yes, please, please – fuck me -  hard -” He broke off, moaning so loudly that John could feel it in his _bones_ as Rodney tensed up around him and his head fell back, hips faltering out of the rhythm - he was coming, he was coming around John dick, and when he collapsed down onto his belly, still making pleading sounds, John surged after him, thrusting one more time and then again, Rodney’s body open and welcoming and completely undone with orgasm and John shoved his cock into his ass again and again, taking him deep and hard and -

John gasped, biting his lip as he came into Rodney.

His arms gave out, folding like tissue paper and shakingly lowering him to rest against Rodney’s back. Rodney’s skin was flushed and sweaty under him.

After a few minutes Rodney wheezed: “This is really good, but I can’t actually breathe.”

John nodded and slid out of Rodney, licking the back of his neck on post-coital careless impulse. Rodney groaned like a man who appreciated it but wouldn’t be able to get it up again until next week. He turned over on his side, blinking slowly at John with pink cheeks and crazy hair for a while until he reached out and gathered him up against him, kissing his jaw. John fitted himself around him, sweaty and exhausted and more content than he’d been in his life. He nosed at Rodney’s hair.

“Good?”

Rodney yawned. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

“I guess I get a go next time.”

“That could be arranged,” Rodney agreed, resting his forehead against John’s shoulder and then turning onto his other side, shimmying back to lie flush against John’s front. John turned his face into the back of Rodney’s neck and smiled.

“I’m open to constructive criticism, by the way,” Rodney mumbled eventually, after so long that John had half thought he’d nodded off. “This whole, uh, combination of apparatus,” he waved idly behind himself towards John’s crotch, “is kind of new to me.”

John, who was entirely too warm and comfortable to take offense at part of his anatomy being described as if it were a power tool, furrowed his brow at the ceiling. “Wait, so you never actually…”

“Not with a man, no.” There was something terse in Rodney’s voice that didn’t invite further discussion, but John had just realized something and blurted it out without thinking.

“That’s why you were surprised? When you - the first time we - um - you know?”

“ _Yes._ ” He cleared his throat. “Though it did, uh, make a lot of sense in hindsight.”

John pushed up on his elbow, and from this angle he could see that Rodney’s ear was suspiciously reddened. This conversation had already tip-toed out onto what John considered to be very thin ice, but it would probably be even weirder to just drop it.

“So you really didn’t know.”

“No. Yes. Kind of. Listen, when I was a kid I could hardly fail to notice that I was chubby, geeky and socially incompetent,” Rodney muttered into the pillow. “I needed another social weak spot like a hole in the head. And then afterwards I guess it just - it never… it seemed easier to just not consider it, okay. Besides, women usually smell better, so if the two choices seem about equally viable...”

He paused thoughtfully. “Well, you smell better than anyone. But you see what I mean.”

“Well, uh… huh.” John lay down again, pressing his lips to Rodney’s shoulder. “I guess it’s good you’re stuck with me, then. Makes away with the complications.”

Rodney huffed, the tension in his shoulders easing up. After a second he turned over again, looking at John with a strange half-smile on his face. His cheeks were bright pink. “Hm. I knew I should have checked the small print before I signed anything.”

“I’m tricky like that.”

“Obviously.” Rodney rested his hand on John’s neck and kissed him, slow and deliberate. John made a startled yet pleased noise and grinned when Rodney pulled back and kissed the tip of John’s nose in the process. “Well, joke’s on them anyway. I landed _you_.”

John snorted and pushed Rodney’s face away, then regretted it immediately and reeled him back in. The sound Rodney made was dangerously close to slipping from snicker to an outright giggle. It was pretty great.

 

\-------

 

One of Teyla’s gate addresses lead to the edge of a lake, which might be wizard-made from the bright azure of the water. It was surrounded by heather and lazy, rolling hills, with the ghosts of sharp mountains in the distance.

The city made them string up clotheslines from the gate to the nearest boulder and hang out the laundry, because apparently it had read somewhere that things needed _airing_. Underwear and trousers turned inside out fluttered in the breeze. They’d used the opportunity to take a blanket with them and have a picnic of sorts at the edge of the lake, since the sun was shining warmly from behind drifting clouds and none of them had probably had a lick of real vitamin D for months.

Now Rodney was trying to teach John some basics of magic. It wasn’t going very well.

“Okay, so hydromancy is a no-go. Well, let’s try this. Fire is a good starting point, actually,” Rodney said, placing a small piece of wood in John’s hand. “It’s just a matter of… hm. In layman’s terms, just find the right spot between the atoms with your mind and use the leverage to give it a good shake. That’s all fire is, really, oxygen getting ahead of itself.”

John looked dubiously at the wood. “How is making a fire directly between your palms not the worst idea ever?”

“Oh please, wizards have done this for time immemorial, of course we have our tricks. That’s a spell training object - the fire doesn’t burn human skin. Don’t drop it, though,” he added quickly. “It will catch in the heather and then we’ll have a sea of flame to contend with. Now stop stalling, close your eyes and try it.”

John grimaced but did it.

“Try to _feel_ what the thing really is - the, um, the structure of it, what kind of bonds are keeping it together.”

John did his best, but it was a little like being back in geography class, as if the subject was coated in a teflon layer of complete and utter boringness and sent his brain straight into thinking about fast, cool things instead. After a while he cracked one eye open. “I’m really not getting this.”

“Shut up and concentrate. It really isn’t that hard and you’re a lot smarter than you like people to think.”

With a sigh John tried again, furling his brow and biting his lip. He tried to imagine the thing from the inside, the atoms neatly organized. Wood was made of… carbon and stuff, maybe? He had no idea. Once, this thing had been part of a sapling stretching hopefully towards the sun, sap pumping through it in summer and going dormant in the winter. Trees had it all figured out, he reckoned; if Antarctica had taught him anything it was that hibernating straight through the winter was the right idea.

Rodney made a surprised sound beside him and John opened his eyes. Something _had_ happened to the piece of wood - from the side of it there now grew a small, fragile sprout, the burgeoning leaves almost see-through.

“That’s not bad, not by a long stretch,” Rodney said excitedly. “Not at all what we were after, of course, but definitely something! Try it again.”

And John tried, he really did, but whatever lightening he’d caught in this bottle was well and truly gone. He shrugged helplessly. “Yeah, no, that was it.”

“Oh well, maybe we’ll try again another time,” Rodney said philosophically. “Magic isn’t for everyone. And you do have other qualities.”

_yeah, at least he’s pretty,_ the city chimed in sardonically.

“You took the words right out of my mouth.”

John elbowed him companionably in the ribs and put the piece of wood down, careful not to squash the sprout. “I guess one mad scientist wielding magic is enough for one household.”

“I can think of other ways to keep warm than fire spells, though,” Rodney said, scooting closer and looking expectantly at John.

“Sounds like a much better plan,” John said and tumbled him down onto the blanket.

_Oh for all that’s holy,_ the city muttered, aggravated yet fond. John could feel it turn off its optical and auditory sensors in the back of his head. _is there nowhere that’s free from organics being so..._ organic _. whatever, have fun, I’ll just be here. doing some science. being useful. unlike you._

And they did have a lot of fun.

 

\-------

 

“John!”

“Muh?” John said, sliding one eye open and squinting up at Rodney, who was kneeling over him on the bed, still fully dressed.

“Are you awake?”

“Well, I am now.” John blinked slowly, feeling certain parts of his anatomy take interest in Rodney straddling him like that. “Time ‘sit?”

“What? Oh, I don’t know, I didn’t check. Now, where’re your pants…” Rodney leaned over the side of the bed and fished up a handful of clothes which he promptly thrust at John. “Come on, put them on, there’s something I need to show you.”

“Okay,” John said vaguely, letting himself be towed along once he’d slid into his jeans.

Together they stumbled into the gateroom, where the gate was open, tinting everything a shimmering underwater blue.

“Ready?” Rodney asked, the mad grin that still graced his face as endearing as it was terrifying. John really should meditate a bit on what his libido was into these days.

“I… guess?”

“Go ahead, then, show him,” the city said, as if indulging a puppy.

Rodney grabbed John’s hand and tugged him to the other side.

The abandoned fairground lay under a high blue sky where white clouds floated lazily away, the air crisp and clear - they had to be somewhere quite far north. Clusters of wildflowers stained the grass like they were vying for the attention of a passing impressionist painter. Weeds snaked through abandoned stalls and climbed up a merry go round, caressing the faded red and white poles - nature quietly and amicably taking back the land, now that the music had stopped.

The view was dominated by a Ferris wheel, standing tall and patient at the edge of the grounds, like it was prepared to wait forever for the next round to begin.

John took a few steps through the thigh-high grass, seeing the faint signs of where Rodney had made a trail before, towards the Ferris wheel. Then he stopped.

“What is this place?” John asked finally, his voice thick.

“I have no idea,” Rodney said, waving a bee away from his face with disgust. “We just happened on it when we were trying out Teyla’s gate addresses. For all I know this was some sorcerer’s pet project; everything here is old but remarkably well preserved. Most of it’s still functional, I think.”

John stared at the Ferris wheel, then turned to Rodney. “It still works?”

“Ah, yes!” Rodney said, raising a finger triumphantly. “I checked before I went to fetch you, and it would indeed seem that the enchanted steel has held up well enough to -  actually, let me just show you.” He followed his own trail through the grass until he could kneel in front of the white box that must be the Ferris wheel controls and fiddled with some buttons.

The lights that lined the cars stuttered on after a few attempts. Very slowly, but with only the barest creak, the great wheel began turning.

“Hah!” Rodney said, standing up and resting his hands on his hips. “Not even a hiccup. They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore. What d’you think?”

He turned expectantly to John, who found words eluded him in the face of the newly relit wheel. Rodney gave a nervous little laugh and went on: “I remembered that thing you said, about Ferris wheels and flying and football - which, well, for that last one I wish I could say I respect that aspect of your character, but I suppose ‘grimly accept’ would be more accurate. So when I found this I thought you might, you know. Like it.” He smiled tentatively, fingers moving quickly as he gestured. “I mean - you do, right? Like it, that is? It’s the… _face_ thing again, I still can’t tell sometimes.”

John looked at the Ferris wheel, looked at Rodney’s anxious face, looked back at the Ferris wheel, and then he grabbed Rodney by his shirt front and kissed him, pushing in as close as he could, suddenly hungry for it all over again, as if he’d spent days in the desert and had finally found cold, clean water. He was starting to have a worrying suspicion that it was never going to stop.

Rodney made a contented sound and met the kiss, his hands settling on John’s hips.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Rodney said weakly, a little out of breath, and John pressed another kiss to his now rosy mouth before he managed to pull away.    

John spent a few seconds getting his speech centers to come up with something useful.

“It’s the coolest thing ever,” he said hoarsely. Rodney beamed at him like that was all he needed, that was all the acceptance speeches, all the ‘I’d like to thank’s and ‘I’d never be standing here today if it weren’t for’s he could ever ask for.

John - who was, at the end of the day, a weak, weak man - couldn’t help himself; he reeled Rodney in for one last lingering kiss before dragging him towards the closest car.

“Oh, you want to… I hadn’t thought I -” He looked at John’s face, and whatever he saw there made him sigh and shake his head. “Yeah, of course, let’s go. Just let me stop it for a second so we can get on it.”

John clambered into a car, which, like the rest of the Ferris wheel, seemed less dilapidated than the general grounds, the only sign of disrepair a few flakes of white paint from the railings clinging to his palm. He stopped Rodney from falling on his face when he scrambled to follow him and, once he was safely inside, let go of him to sit on the wooden seat. It didn’t even make a single creak. Rodney was right, some sorcerer must have enchanted this thing to hell and back.

“There,” Rodney said, sitting down like a man expecting volatile explosives under his seat. “Perfectly safe. Nothing to worry about. No parts falling off. Good.”

They sat there for a while before John prompted: “Rodney?”

“Huh? Oh, yes, of course.” Rodney closed his eyes and muttered something unintelligible under his breath. A faint click sounded from nearby machinery, and then smoothly, soundlessly, the car started to rise. Rodney immediately gripped the handrail so tightly his knuckles turned white.

“Hey,” John said, stroking his thigh. “If you want to sit this one out -”

“No, no, no, of course I’m coming with you,” Rodney said. “I’ll just… not look down. Perfectly doable.”

John grinned and left his hand where it was, leaning so he could see the ground falling away beneath them.

Rodney sat with his eyes squeezed closed for half a minute before cracking one open, then the other. He peered cautiously at the landscape unfolding before them and made a speculative face.

“Maybe this isn’t so bad,” he allowed after a while. “Or the adrenaline has just deadened all my nerve endings, that could be it too.”

John laughed at him, but in a nice way.

“The view is okay. Scenic, even, if you have a thing for trees,” Rodney said grudgingly, like it hurt his very soul to admit it.

“Well, if you’re really grasping for a downside, I suppose there’s no popcorn.”

The corner of Rodney’s mouth twitched up. “At least I have that.”

The twilight moved in slowly, still warm, the sky sliding from blue into purple into the beginnings of star-mottled navy, and they talked. John tried to pontificate about some of the finer points of football until Rodney actually covered his ears with his hands and went ‘la la la’ loudly and demonstratively. They argued some more about who was the coolest legendary sorcerer - John was still convinced it was Leana the Sky Walker, because she was _awesome_ , used a sword made of light and had once almost set fire to the atmosphere, while Rodney was as adamant that it was Myrrdan the Clever, who might not be as flashy but could dethrone kings with five simple words and ruled over the elements and befriend spirits. Rodney made a real effort to explain some magical principles again, which went so far over John’s head that it ought to brush against the stratosphere, but it made him feel all melty because Rodney rambling about things he loved was always an uplifting thing.

As good as all of it was - Rodney, Ferris wheels, the wind brushing through his hair - there was a shiver of unease at the edge of his mind, like a violin string being played gently enough to make a thin sound right on the edge of hearing. He tried to understand what he was feeling, and realized that he was happy. The fact sat there in his chest like a lightning rod for fear, leading the terror right to the pit of his stomach.

It was like a sudden ninety degree tilt in perception, like falling into nothingness from firm footing.

He’d taken a step outside of himself, looking in on a world gone pale and strange, with twisted meanings, everything suddenly as fragile as a sparrow’s wing. And, he realized with a distant shudder, he hadn’t made a way out this time. He’d put too much of himself into this while he hadn’t been looking. This time, if it crashed, he was going down with it.

There was nowhere to fly away to.

“John?”

John glanced over at him. He didn’t know how long it had been.

Rodney’s eyes widened. “What happened?”

“...Nothing.”

“Yeah, right, pull the other one. Your eyes look all… they’re… what’s wrong?”

And John wanted to tell him, because Rodney looked scared and sad and worried. “I don’t know. I…” He pressed his hand against his chest, where his heart should be, the scar bitingly cold against his palm.

Something like understanding dawned on Rodney’s face. “Oh.” He reached out, then hesitated. “Is it okay if I…”

John nodded and moved his own hand out of the way. Rodney’s palm was warm, uncomfortably so, and the touch moved over John’s skin like lightening, unsettling.

“Can I… is there anything you need me to…”

And there wasn’t really an answer to that.

John thought for a long while, then put his hand on top of Rodney’s, shifting it a little so that their fingers twined together.

Well, fuck it. He didn’t particularly want a way out this time, anyway. He wanted to stay. He’d never wanted anything so much in his whole life.

With a sigh, he lowered his forehead to rest on Rodney’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s going to be okay. Just gimme me a minute.”

Rodney’s voice had a slight edge of hysteria to it. “I’ll give you all the minutes you want. Hours. Centuries, even, I’m not stingy like that.”

John chuckled and squeezed Rodney’s hand. After a while Rodney’s other hand came up to rest on John’s neck. John turned into the touch and closed his eyes as he waited for the colors to leak back into his world - at least a little, at least enough. Rodney’s shirt smelled nice, the happy familiar scent of both Rodney himself and the city.

They could go home if they wanted to.  

“Are you okay?”

“I will be,” John said, because now he knew it was true.

“Should we leave?” Rodney still sounded worried.

John shook his head decisively. “No.”

“Right. Okay,” There was a brief silence, then he added: “You’re still wrong about Leana, by the way. She was all about the gimmicks, no real substance to her.”

“Screw you, McKay.”

“You already have,” they chorused, obligatorily, and the laughter thawed John enough to sit up.

John lifted his head to look out at the horizon. He could still feel Rodney’s eyes on the side of his face. “I think you can see the ocean from here,” he realized after a while. He pointed. “Over there.”

Rodney let out a breath that could have been laughter. He moved their interlaced hands to rest on the railing. “Really? I didn’t catch that,” he said. “Better wait for the next time around.”

John smiled. “Best seats in the house.”

And they sat there until long after the stars broke free and Rodney started muttering glumly about frostbite and asscheeks.

 

\-------

 

The city had them bring back flowers from the fairgrounds and from the market in Kingshaven - pots upon pots of the things, in fact, a request it had justified variously as ‘wanting to brighten the place up a bit’, ‘getting closer to the wondrous complexities of nature’ and ‘hey, sometimes you just want to carry out experiments that would be unethical if you performed them on the salamander’. Even John, not widely known for his sense of interior decorating - Holland had once accused him of being one black and white poster away from taking asceticism to a weird accidental Zen level - could appreciate that the splashes of color brought some life back into the metal walls of the city.

It seemed to have fun with it all, pruning and watering and holding one-sided intellectual debates with ferns because it was a well-known gardening fact that they grew better when you talked to them, _everyone_ knew that. John would have been fine with this new hobby if it weren’t for the fact that the city insisted on making the kitchen they used most often into an experimental hothouse, which made breakfast awkward.

“Is this really necessary?” John asked and pushed aside a luxuriously green leaf the length of his thigh to reach the butter.

“I’ve told you, I’m placing them in various places in the city to observe how different environments affect their development,” the city said, a pair of its gardening gloved robot hands snipping leaves off an overgrown stem. John had his feet resting in Rodney’s lap, while Rodney warily pushed what looked like a silvery sunflower away to make room for his plate. “I’m testing what food-related fumes will do to them.”

John fed a lump of coal to Fred, who was curled up around his coffee mug and purring happily at the warmth. “All I’m saying is that you could maybe keep this new hobby of yours away from the kitchen. Are you _sure_ none of these eat meat? Because I think that one is eying my bacon.”

“No, no, no, I haven’t managed to produce any carnivorous variants yet - uh, did I say ‘yet’? Ha, ha, ha, what a charmingly organic mistake to make. Why would anyone want to produce flesh-eating plants, huh? Silly idea. Potentially dangerous, though theoretically intriguing, since most carnivorous plant life only take nutrients from living prey while still producing its energy from photosynthesis and…” It paused, gardening scissors stopping momentarily. “I’m not helping my case here, am I?”

“I recognize the lure of pure scientific curiosity, but if one of your daisies try anything with my breakfast it’ll end up on the wrong end of my fork,” Rodney warned.

“How about no carnivores allowed in this kitchen except for Rodney and me,” John said, holding Fred back from sniffing a colourful sprout.

“Ugh, you never let me have _any fun_ ,” the city grumbled. “Oh well, maybe I can work on the frost-resistant orchids instead. I suppose they’re marginally less likely to cause a horticultural apocalypse.”

“Glad to hear it,” John said, sipping his coffee.

“Oh, and by the way,” the city said. “I think there’s a message trying to get through in the gate room, you might want to check on that. Sorry, I just get kind of wrapped up in pruning.”

Rodney, looking like he hadn’t had nearly enough coffee for this, sighed and stuck a piece of toast in his mouth. “I’m on it, I’m on it.” John stretched and followed him into the gate room, watching while Rodney worked.

“It’s another crystal ball transmission,” Rodney muttered, waving his toast impatiently as he navigated the console one-handed.

“Could it be Teyla?” John asked.

“Maybe? I don’t recognize the address, but… well, there’s only one way to find out. She could need our help. Let’s see here...”

The screen flickered to life, but there was no trace of Teyla there. Looking back at them instead was the narrow face of Ladon Radim.

Rodney dropped his toast.

“Please,” Ladon said quickly, holding up his empty hands, “let me speak before you cut off the call. Things are not as they seem.”

Rodney glanced over at John, who lifted his eyebrows quizzically back at him.

“They aren’t?” John said finally. Ladon’s shoulders slumped just the tiniest bit - relief. He hadn’t been certain they’d take the bait.

“As I’m sure you’ve already gathered, I am alone and unarmed.” He stepped aside, giving a good view of the background - a bare plain of some sort, where you had a clear line of sight in every direction for miles, the only landmark a small tumbledown shack just behind Ladon. “I have a proposal for you, if you would meet with me and hear me out.”

Rodney laughed disbelievingly. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Think about it, Doctor McKay. I let you go, back on the base.”

“He kind of did,” John said.

Rodney glared at him. “Listen, with your track record with the Genii you’re crazy if you think I’m letting them anywhere _near_ -”

Ladon broke in. “I am not here on behalf of the Genii. Not in the way you’re thinking, anyway. In fact, this has more to do with the return of the wraith than politics. Take whatever precautions you feel necessary - you’ll have my full cooperation.”

He went down on his knees and put his hands behind his head, almost cavalierly.

“You’ll let us bring weapons?” John asked skeptically.

“Certainly.”

Rodney held up a hand and smiled woodenly. “Hang in there for a second.” He turned off the screen and looked at John. “Sheppard, please don’t tell me we’re actually considering this.”

“There is something odd going on with him, though,” John pointed out. “Why _would_ he let us go?”

Rodney turned his face heavenward as if praying for divine intervention. “You want us to have the meeting with him, don’t you.”

“Damn right I do. Think about it, Rodney. People who know about the wraith are pretty thin on the ground, never mind people who could possibly do something about it. And if it’s not genuine - he’s just one guy, we’ll bring some weapons, a couple of spells…”

“John, come _on_.”

“He must know that there’s a good chance we’ll just kill him on sight,” John insisted. “Whatever it is he wants to talk about, he’s got to think it’s pretty damn important.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Rodney muttered. He turned to the city. “You’ve scanned the area, right?”

“I have. It would seem that his claim is genuine. He’s carrying no weapons or magic, and he’s the only living being bigger than a water rat for several kilometers.”

“Oh, how nice, he brought the family,” Rodney said sourly. “Okay, okay, we’ll go there. Just… let me gather up some stuff.”

When they’d found pretty much everything in the city that could conceivably be used as a weapon - the gun they’d taken from Kolya, a few kitchen knives, some of their more creative spells - Rodney turned the screen back on. Ladon was still on his knees, whistling cheerfully to himself.

“This guy is so weird,” Rodney said quietly.

“Yeah,” John admitted, then louder: “Okay, we’re coming through. Stay right where you are.”

Ladon stayed kneeling as they stepped through the gate, but straightened up as well as he could when he spotted them. “You decided to come. Excellent.” He looked them over. “You also decided to bring half an armory. Unnecessary, but under the circumstances I suppose it is just a mark of common sense.”

“Let’s just get on with it,” John said.

Ladon took them to the small tumbledown building they’d seen in the transmission. Inside was precious little but a few rusty tin cans, a low table and some crates apparently meant to serve as chairs.

“Please, sit down,” Ladon said, pulling out a crate for himself. John and Rodney settled down across the table from him. “I’m sorry about the mess.”

“In here, or just in general?” Rodney said. “Because you really have gone out of your way to screw us over once or twice.”

“Let’s say both. The whole business with your friend here,” he nodded at John, “was… unfortunate. It was not my decision, of course, but I still appreciate that you agreed to meet me despite - well, everything.”

John folded his arms. “Miss me already?”

“Why yes,” Ladon said, smiling thinly and touching what was now a fresh scar on his forehead. “Whenever I get a migraine, I take a moment to fondly remember our time together.”

“Aw, you always know what to say. So I take it you’re not quite as reformed as the SGC thinks,” John said.

Ladon tipped his head to one side as if he was honestly thinking it over. “Perhaps.”

“So how do you know we won’t just sell you out to them?” Rodney said.

“Let’s see…” Ladon nodded his head towards Rodney. “Powerful unlicensed magic user. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Dr. McKay, you were hardly subtle during your roaring rampage of rescue. And _you_ ,” a blithe nod towards John, “a deserter wanted for the murder of a superior officer. It’d be in everyone’s best interest for the government to be as sparingly involved in this as possible, don’t you think?”

“Fine, fine, we get your point. Smug little…” Rodney muttered darkly.  

John leaned forward. “Say your piece, then. What’s this about the wraith?”

“This war has… not gone well for us,” Ladon said, a muscle in his cheek giving a twitch. “Our sorcerers were being eaten up like grass in a wildfire, and… Hm. Some time ago one of our research teams happened upon something on the fringes of the Waste. Some _one_ , rather.”

“Sealed demon in a can, huh?” John said.

“Precisely. He was hibernating inside something that looked like an escape pod. We took him to one of our more remote facilities, and I don’t know how or why, but he… woke up. He seemed harmless to begin with, well-spoken and too weak to even stand up properly, but we still kept him restrained. Then he asked to speak to Cowen and a few of his ministers.”

“I have the feeling I know who this wraith will turn out to be,” John said.

“This would be our mutual - and, sadly, now very _late_ \- friend, yes.”

Out of the corner of his eye John saw Rodney’s jaw tighten.

“He promised an army if we allowed him to wake his brethren, despite the fact that an alliance between humans and wraith would be completely unprecedented and, one daresay, unlikely to end in any other way than one party eventually becoming dinner. Still, the offer turned out to be too tempting for President Cowen to resist. So our _leadership_ ,” Ladon said, in a tone of voice usually reserved for words like ‘cockroaches’, “decided to take the chance. We let him begin his work, but were not prepared for how quickly he recovered. He… slipped away from us.”

Rodney squinted at him in disbelief. “So not only did you revive _a life-sucking super demon_ , you managed to unleash him on the rest of us?”

“He did murder and _eat_ ten of his handlers in less than five minutes. So yes. For a while there he was… temporarily mislaid. Once we got him back he must already have sent a wakeup signal to the other demons, and we had no way to control them.”

“Isn’t it just awful when a free lunch turns out to be laced with arsenic,” John said.

“The wraith are curious creatures. I have come to believe they’re an Ancient experiment. Considering that as far as we know the demons don’t die from natural causes -  they do not age, they do not get ill, and if they’re brought to the point of starvation they enter a form of hibernation which they can sustain for extreme lengths of time - it might have been an attempt at achieving eternal life.”

“And, like always with these guys, it all went horribly right,” Rodney sighed.  

“Indeed. Their success in this matter might actually have contributed to their withdrawal from this world. You see, the wraith did not lay down voluntarily - they were _put_ to sleep. It’s a powerful, ancient spell that’s unlike anything else I’ve seen. The sheer power that must have gone into it… I’m not sure if the Ancients took it all to another level or were playing a different game altogether. It would have granted them all the time they needed to safely retreat.”

“You’re telling me the Ancients _knew_ that they were waking up one day?”

“I find it very hard to believe they wouldn’t. Though I suppose their line of thought would be that by the time the problem resurfaced, they would all be long gone.”

Rodney turned to John. “Hey, hang on, why do we keep saying these people were the good guys?”

“Good PR, I guess?”

“Oh. Right.”

Ladon wrinkled his brow. “At first our discovery of this spell seemed a great breakthrough. We figured that if we could replicate, or at least reinforce the spell again, we could buy some time. However, it quickly became apparent that part of it was missing somehow. Not only that, the simple act of analyzing and setting it up would take vast amounts of power - power we did not have, which, needless to say, turned into quite the obstacle.” He drummed his fingers on his thigh, eyes distant. “I had hoped Doranda - but it turned out to be too volatile. Maybe if there was time to really understand how it works, but we don’t have that. And our own attempts - we started experimenting with alternative power sources, approximately five years ago. I worried about the radiation, but building better shielding would take time and resources we didn’t have. In the end I simply agreed to...  Well. I’m sure you can imagine how that turned out.”

“You built these things down where your people live too, didn’t you,” Rodney said flatly. “You guys do still live in those underground cities, right?”

“Many of our civilians have stayed underground for their entire lives.”

“Their entire _short_ lives.”

Whatever warmth Ladon’s face had ever held,  it now gave way to permafrost.  He made a twiddling sort of gesture with his thumbs and looked away. “One of the affected is my sister,” he said. “She got sick from working at one of the stations. If I hadn’t approached the SGC, she would be dead. They haven’t… they can’t heal her yet, but they have been able to slow the progress of her illness. If I could remove Cowen from power, we could also put more resources into finding a cure on our own.”

“But you don’t _actually_ work for the SGC.”

“Well gentlemen, if that is to be the benchmark of a worthy cause, you have to admit that neither do you.”

“So… Cowen sent you to spy on the SGC, and then the SGC thought you were spying on the Genii for them, but really you were spying on both of them for your own purposes. You’re some kind of,” Rodney squinted thoughtfully, “quintuple agent? And here I thought my life was getting complicated.”

“That’s gotta be a bitch to keep track of,” John agreed. “So hard to know which back to stab with which knife.”

“As strange as this may sound, I did not actually contact the two of you for your sparkling repartee. I have something you might want, something that could benefit us all.”

“See, from anyone else that would have my interest,” Rodney said. “Since it’s from you, I’m afraid you’ll only get suspicion.”

“Harsh, but fair. I’ve hardly been transparent in my dealings with you.”

“So what happens to your sister if the SGC realizes you screwed them over?” John said.

That tiny inscrutable smile again. “But I have not, in your colorful idiom, screwed them over. Quite the opposite, in fact; all the information I have given them has been real, if… selective, and once Cowen’s regime has been toppled I am going to offer our full cooperation and immediate peace talks. It’s not the SGC I am worried about.” He steepled his fingers in front of him. “The way I see it, my problem is twofold. On one side my people are fighting a senseless war that was… _ill-advised_ to begin with. It has not only reduced our military to shambles, it has also taken a heavy toll on the civilian population, not to mention our sorcerers. The whole thing is a farce, and it has been for years now - whatever great forgotten empire Cowen believes he’s fighting to restore, it appears he means to build it on the bones of the living. That is the part I can solve myself.”

“Just like that?”

“I believe so. Politics are ultimately just a matter of people, and people can be moved with the right leverage. But demons… strictly speaking, I’m a scientist, not a sorcerer. An army of eldritch abominations is above my pay grade. That is where you come in.”

“Of course it is,” Rodney mumbled.

“There _is_ a bright spot in all of this; the wraith have not yet found their Queen - capital Q. As far as I’ve gathered from talking to our mutual friend, these demons have some kind of… collective mind, like - like an anthill, or a swarm of locusts, and the Queen is its leader. She gives them direction and purpose. With a Queen in charge they’re an army, one formidable entity that could tear every empire in this world to pieces within decades. Without her they are confused, divided, unable to establish a course of action. I would very much prefer to deal with them while they’re still leaderless.”

“The demon,” John said slowly, “he did say something about a Queen. So that’s why they haven’t made a move yet?”

“Presumably. I believe our friend was in the process of locating her when we recaptured him. He was… special. He might have been her second in command once upon a time, and that’s why he was able to take action as an individual when the others couldn’t. Of course that’s largely irrelevant now.”

“He’s not going to be following any more royal commands, I’ll give you that.”

“Not beyond an _organic_ level, no. His death might have bought us some time, but he can’t be the only one of them with such capabilities. Another is bound to awaken eventually.”

“So what is it you want us to do, exactly?” Rodney said.

“The spell we found- it could be used to put the wraith back to sleep,” Ladon said carefully. “The only problem is that to make it as powerful as it needs to affect a large area like the Wastes, we require a significant amount of magical force.”

Rodney made an unconvinced sound. “Are you telling me that the combined resources of the Genii wouldn’t be enough for that?”

“We are talking about the kind of force that could burn out a star. It would amaze you how much of that the state budget doesn’t cover.”

John whistled under his breath. “And you think we’re your best shot at that… how?”

“You have access to the city of the Ancients - you have a better chance than anyone to carry out one of their spells. Besides, I saw your work the last time we met and I must say I found it impressive, even if it did render the base uninhabitable for years to come.”

Rodney glanced over at John. “Uh. Technically sound idea there, admittedly, but there are some…”

“Complications,” John said.

Ladon took this news with disconcerting calmness. “Power shortage? I had suspected as much. It would seem uncharacteristically cautious for the two of you to have the city and not do anything... spectacular with it. Thankfully, I did plan for this.”

He lifted a bag from the floor and put it on the table, loosening the drawstring to reveal…

McKay swore under his breath as the golden crystal appeared. John put his hand on Rodney’s knee under the assumption that if he wasn’t held back, he’d pounce on the thing and elope with it in the night.

Ladon smiled thinly. “Would this suffice?”

“You would just _give_ us a ZPM,” Rodney said flatly.

Ladon shrugged. “I have nothing it could possibly power. What use is it to me, except as a bartering chip?”

“And what if we turned on the Genii after finishing off the wraith? Hypothetically, of course. Ow.” He scowled as John elbowed him in the ribs. “I mean, don’t pretend this isn’t a risk from your side.”

“Then I would be up against the two of you instead of an ancient demon army. Excuse me for saying so, but those are odds I’m willing to accept. The description of the spell,” Ladon said, holding up a small turquoise-tinted crystal before putting it down on the table. “What you do with it is your own business, of course.”

He stood up, brushing some imaginary specks of dust off his sleeve.

“I will no longer stand idly by and do nothing. I hope you will reach the same conclusion.”

“Hold on,” John said suspiciously. “We didn’t actually figure in your plan before?”

Ladon shrugged. “Not really. I wasn’t even sure the demon hadn’t lied about the city of the Ancients, and, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, you were on the brink of death and not very helpful for most of the time I’ve known you. It didn’t seem a worthwhile investment.”

“So you were just going to let me die down there?”

“Oh yes,” Ladon said easily. “The benefits of helping you would have been vastly outweighed by the danger my plan would be subjected to under potential scrutiny.” He grinned, and John felt a chill run down his spine. “How fortuitous for the both of us that things didn’t turn out that way, hm?”

“Yes,” Rodney said, the sheer ice in his voice startling John. He watched Ladon with a closed, dispassionate expression that suddenly reminded John of why parents scared their kids to go to bed by telling them a wizard would find them if they didn’t. “We’ve _all_ been very lucky.”

Ladon’s grin warmed a little. “Indeed. Goodbye. I hope you consider what we’ve spoken about today.”

He left without another word.

Rodney reached out, picked up the ZPM and clutched it to his chest. “This might just be the most beautiful moment of my life.”

“Should I leave you two alone for a while?” John drawled.

“Shut up,” Rodney said. “Let’s go home and get it installed.”

He kissed John’s cheek on their way out, giddy like a kid opening a lifetime of Christmas presents all at once, and John supposed the ZPM was okay, really.

 

\-------

 

Actually implementing the new ZPM turned out to be harder than expected.

“Goddamn Ancients throwing in complications just for shits and… do you mind putting your finger here for a second?”

John reached over Rodney’s shoulder to press down on the loose panel without looking up from his book. “I seem to remember something about how this was going to be a cakewalk, McKay.”

Rodney wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Well, you’d think so - it’s not supposed to be a complicated process, but the Ancients seem to have just chucked every redundant redundancy with a needless cherry on top at this thing. It’s almost like they didn’t want anyone to be able to change the batteries. Hang on… there, you can let go now.”  

He placed an absentminded kiss to the inside of John’s wrist before John pulled his hand away. It made John’s chest do some things he didn’t understand.

Clearing his throat, he turned over another page and leaned back against the warm metal.

“I mean, you really have to wonder about these guys,” Rodney said. “It takes a certain quirk of evolution to produce a race so simultaneously brilliant beyond belief _and_ so mind-bogglingly stupid. Find a way to achieve eternal life? Excellent, enjoy the resulting army of man-eating monsters! See you never!”

“That is starting to sound depressingly familiar, yes.”

Rodney bit his lip, forced the last crystal into its tray and then put his hand on the ZPM to be ready to push it into place. “Okay, I think that should do -”

A loud crackling noise sounded from the machinery, sparks flying, and the lights flickered overhead before going out. John barely managed to grab Rodney and throw them both to the floor before the panel spewed out a last fountain of sparks, and then everything went dark.

There was a long silence before the city’s lights came back on with a deep, tremulous hum.

“I... did not expect that,” Rodney informed the empty air, still clutching John’s waist. John nodded dazedly in agreement.

There were some noises like radio static, and then the city said: “Ow.”

“Are you okay?” Rodney asked, pushing himself up into a crouch so he could study the machinery. “What the hell happened there?”

“I’m… fine. Fiiiiiine. F. Ine.” Some more crackling sounds, and then a small, embarrassed cough. “There. Better. I’m fine, Rodney. The auxiliary power systems just gave a hiccup.”

Rodney was going through the log, scratching his head so his hair stood straight up on one side. Between that and his insomnia-induced wild eyes he was starting to invoke a definite air of ‘mad scientist’. He sounded near tears of exhaustion. “I… I don’t understand it, it’s almost as if something is purposefully crippling - but why would they…”

“Hey,” John said, patting his shoulder. “There’s no point letting your brain overheat as well. Let it wait until tomorrow.”

Rodney heaved a big sigh. “Yeah, okay. I’m seeing double right now. Good idea. We’ll do this   _later_ ,” he added, giving the offending power relay a sharp look, like someone demanding an extension on a duel because they’d caught a cold. He took John’s hand and tipped his face up for a kiss before letting himself be dragged off towards the nearest transporter.

 

\---

 

The bed felt like heaven, soft and warm and, best of all, containing Rodney. John rearranged the endless pillows until he lay just right, wrapping himself around Rodney and closing his eyes. Rodney was unusually quiet, but then he had seemed tired before.   

John had almost dozed off when there was a quiet press of warmth on his chest. John slid his eyes open to find Rodney’s hand resting there, palm over where his heart would have been.

“Oh, sorry,” Rodney said in the darkness, starting to pull away, “did I wake you?”

“No,” John lied, tightening his hold to make sure Rodney didn’t go anywhere. He closed his eyes again, turning his face into Rodney’s hair.

“Okay. Good.” For a long time Rodney’s thumb just brushed back and forth, an easy whisper against his skin. “I don’t know if... I mean, you probably don’t want to...”

“Out with it, McKay,” John slurred, too comfortable for clear speech.

Rodney’s thumb halted for a second. “What does it feel like?”

John opened his eyes, surprised. He listened to the echoing emptiness in his chest, then said: “Well, it’s more of a case of _not_ feeling - it’s not in there, remember?”

“Oh. Well, that... makes sense, I guess.” Rodney wriggled a little closer, pressing his face into John’s shoulder. Another silence, and then: “Though you still feel, y’know...”

John felt the long pain-sweet surge in his torso, quickly fading out but lingering. “Yeah,” he said, putting his hand on top of Rodney’s, twining their fingers together. Rodney’s shoulders relaxed almost imperceptibly; John smiled and pressed his lips to the top of his head.

“You still have a pulse,” Rodney said after a while, and suddenly John noticed it too, a steady beat under his fingertips - he hadn’t thought to feel for it. “Huh. I mean, it’s only logical, you’d still need blood circulation and stuff even if - well, that’s magic for you. All… metaphorical.”

“Uh-huh,” John said, staring at the overcast sky through the glass ceiling.

Rodney kept his hand on John’s chest even when he started making soft, snuffling sleep noises, and John followed him into sleep a few minutes later.


	11. In which various substances hit the proverbial fan

John was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the side of the sofa and with his head resting against Rodney’s thigh, idly twirling his pencil.

“Aquatic mammal, five letters,” he prompted, craning his neck to glance at Rodney, who didn’t look up from his book.

“I can’t _believe_ you’re still working on that. You’ve been stuck for three days now.”

“So?”

“So I’m a little worried about being attracted to a man who spends three consecutive evenings failing at a crossword puzzle.”

John raised his pencil in mock epiphany. “Oh, wait, I’ve got it now. K-I-L-L-J-O-Y. There we go. Fits perfectly. Ow,” he added, laughing as Rodney poked the back of his head.

“Serves you right,” Rodney sniffed, absently brushing his fingers through John’s hair. After a minute or so he said: “‘Whale’?”

“Probably,” John said gamely and jotted it down. The gate room was peaceful, almost cozy when it was dark outside, like a cave, or a shelter.   

He glanced over at the windows to the balcony - and he froze up.

“What?” Rodney said immediately, looking around in panic. “What is it, what’s wrong?”

“There’s someone out there,” John muttered, getting to his feet as quietly and casually as he could.

“What?” Rodney hissed, scrambling after him. “Who the hell would - oh.”

He’d spotted the silhouette too, then. It looked like the shadow of a man, clothes flapping around him in the wind.

“What do we do?” Rodney whispered, keeping close enough to John’s back for John to feel his chest moving as his breath quickened.

“Um…”

“What _are_ you going on about, there’s nobody there,” the city broke in. “The only life signs for miles around are the two of you.”

“Oh, so we’re just having a shared visual hallucination, then, how comforting,” Rodney said scathingly.

So… roughly the shape of a man but no life signs - with a jolt John recognized the tall, thin figure. “Well, shit,” he said, hurrying over and opening the balcony door. “Um, sorry about that, we didn’t recognize you there for a sec. Please, come in.”

The figure jumped inside with springy leaps.

“What the hell are you doing, Shep - oh. Oh, your scarecrow friend,” Rodney said, looking about as shamefaced as John felt. “I’d kind of… forgotten about him.”

“Yeah,” John said. “Uh. Sorry about that, buddy.”

The scarecrow didn’t look particularly offended, but then that was an unrealistic level of emotional expressiveness to impose on a turnip.

“So… what can we do for you?” Rodney said nervously. “Did you just get tired of being out in the cold, or…”

“He’s stuck as a scarecrow,” the city pointed out. “How would he even know it’s cold?”

At the sound of the city’s voice the scarecrow turned slowly on his stick, as if trying to find the source.

“He’s even harder to deal with than you human types. I mean… does he _eat?_ ”

“Well. Rodney did say something about breaking the curse… I mean, if that’s what you want?” John added, just to be sure. The scarecrow bounced energetically. “I’ll take that as a yes. How about it, McKay?”

“I’ve given it some thought,” Rodney said, walking around the scarecrow like he was planning to tailor a suit for it or something. “It’s an impressive spell, but it’s been worn thin in places over time. If you could just disrupt the magical flow in one of those weak spots…”

“So you can break it, then?” John asked.

Rodney made a half-convinced sound, still circling the scarecrow. “I think so. I mean, ostensibly it needs a ‘true love’s kiss’ to be lifted,” he rolled his eyes. “how original, but unless you feel a sudden and unnatural stirring for root vegetables…”

The scarecrow whacked him unceremoniously over the back of the head with a stick arm.

“Ow! I am trying to help you, you ungrateful -”

“He means well,” John told the scarecrow, steering Rodney away to safety.

Scowling and rubbing his head Rodney muttered: “Yeah, I can probably break the curse. Just… let me find some of my books and stuff, I’ll be right back.”

After briefly poring over a couple of old tomes that could conceivably take a man’s foot off if dropped, Rodney drew one of his ridiculously complicated sigils on the floor, grumbling about backaches all the while. Finally he stood back up and put his hands on his hips, apparently satisfied.

“Pretty sure that’s it. Are you ready?” Rodney asked the scarecrow, then narrowed his eyes when it just stood there silently. “Is that a yes? A no? You’ve got one hell of a poker face there.”

John rolled his eyes. “How about two jumps for yes, one for no.”

The scarecrow performed two decisive jumps.

“Great, let’s go. Stand in the middle of the symbol there.” Rodney closed his eyes and reached out a hand, wrinkling his brow in concentration.

The chalk markings started glowing with a strong pink light that weaved around the scarecrow like an army of effeminate fireflies. John felt the hairs on his arms stand up, and then the hem of his t-shirt started flowing up like gravity had relinquished some of its hold, or like they were under water. He tried to push it back down, intrigued, but it just floated up again.

He looked at Rodney, whose clothes were also billowing up around him although he didn’t seem to care or even notice. The pink light made his face seem hard and empty, like it was cut from stone - John didn’t like it; Rodney always looked like he went somewhere _else_ in his head when he did serious magic.

Rodney opened his eyes, the light reflecting in them as he lowered his hand. He grabbed John’s arm as if he were dizzy. “That’s about it, now it just needs to work itself out.”

When the glow faded they could see the figure of a man kneeling on the floor. John looked at Rodney, who just shrugged.  

“Are you okay?” John ventured, taking a step forward.

The man pushed to his feet, and John looked up and then further up - holy shit, this guy was _tall_ \- into a dark, surprisingly young face with a neatly trimmed beard and sharp, fine features. The rags that had been the scarecrow’s clothing hung off his broad shoulders and from his hips, keeping things thankfully decent.

“Oh, thank god, it worked,” Rodney muttered.

Both John and the man turned to stare at him. “Was that ever in doubt?” John demanded.

Rodney scoffed. “Of course not. But, um, it _was_ a very old and powerful spell and there could have been a tiny - miniscule, really - chance that he’d be stuck between - but it turned out pretty well, didn’t it?”

He glanced nervously at the guy, probably because he had the kind of overarms that suggested he wrestled grizzly bears on his evenings off.

The guy didn’t appear to take it too much to heart, though. He opened his mouth to speak, but the sound he managed to produce was little more than a croak.

“Some water, maybe?” John asked. The guy nodded.

Once he’d gulped down a few mouthfuls he ground out: “Thanks.”

“So. What’s your name?”

“Ronon,” the man said, his voice like rusty hinges. “Specialist... Ronon Dex.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Ronon. I mean… it’s nice to meet you while neither of us are in vegetable form.”

Ronon nodded absently, his mind obviously on other things. He cleared his throat roughly, making John wince at how much it sounded like he was trying to swallow a cheese grater.

“Storm,” Ronon rasped, then took another sip. “There’s a storm coming.”

A long pause followed.

“In a _metaphorical_ sense, or a meteorological one? ” Rodney ventured finally. “Because those two can turn out pretty differently.”

Ronon looked at him flatly. “A real one.”

“So… you came here to provide a weather forecast?”

”It’s not a normal storm,” Ronon said. ”Never seen anything like it before. Makes you feel like the world’s gonna end when you look at it.”

“Actually, a real storm could prove to be a problem,” the city said.

“Really?” Rodney said. “The Ancients built a city that could lie on the bottom of the ocean for thousands of years, but not get rained on too hard?”

Ronon looked around like a spooked cat for the voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

“Don’t worry about it,” John told him, patting his elbow reassuringly.

The city huffed. “This _is_ the south pole, Rodney. The storms here can get pretty rough, and we’ve drifted closer to the sea. Mostly I’m thinking about the shields, though - some of the systems might have been damaged when we rose from the ocean.”

Ronon confusedly mouthed ‘rose from the ocean?’.

“It doesn’t make any more sense once you know,” John whispered.

Rodney sighed. “Yeah, I suppose you have a point there. We’ll have to make a run-through of the system.”

“I can start it up now, if you’d like. I’m just being careful, really, I do think the shields can handle it.”

“Might as well, right? And as for you - we should probably get you something else to wear,” Rodney mused, turning to Ronon. “I don’t think we have anything in _your_ size lying about, though, I’d have to get something. Hm. It’s night time in Kingshaven, but I’ve always gotten along well enough with Mrs. Bale, I’m sure it’ll be okay.”

After having returned with an armful of brown clothes and a harrowing tale of having almost been brained with a clothes hanger by the tiny old shopkeeper - who, despite Rodney’s hopes, _didn’t_ appreciate being woken up in the middle of the night - Rodney joined John in making dinner while Ronon cleaned up.

An hour later Ronon was sitting on the gate room stairs, a bowl of soup in his lap and a blanket draped over his shoulders. John had Rodney suspected of picking the pink, fluffy one with a yellow duck embroidered in one corner on purpose, though Rodney had insisted it was because it was the only one big enough to cover all of Ronon.

“This is actually pretty good,” Ronon said, waving his spoon towards his bowl. “Is there more of it?”

“Enough for a… is that a fifth helping now?” Rodney said, hiding a yawn behind his hand. “Wow.”

Ronon shrugged unconcernedly. For a while he seemed wholly occupied with his soup, but then he said: “Some place you’ve got here.”

“We like it,” John said, marvelling at the near McKay-like speed at which the guy was putting away his food.

“A bit too magical for me,” Ronon said. “Powerful enough that it bends the magical field around it? Like a miniature black hole? Yeah, I’m not so sure what that’s gonna do to you.”

“So…you’re not thinking of staying, then? Where do you want to go from here?”

Ronon put down his spoon. “I’ve got to get back. They must be waiting for my report at home.”

“Yes, of course. Of course.” Rodney squinted. “Where _is_ it you’re from, exactly?”

“Sateda.”

Rodney blinked. “ _Sateda?_ ”

“Yeah,” Ronon said, sounding kind of irritated. He turned to John. “Is he a bit slow or something?”

John glanced over at Rodney, who was shaking his head frantically. They had a silent fight about which of them was going to have to break it to him, with Rodney indicating that he had no intention of letting the McKay line end by setting himself up to be squashed like a bug. John sighed and took the bullet.

“Well, see… Sateda lost the war.” Ronon’s face stayed completely impassive. John didn’t know if it was the effect of having had a turnip for a face for that long or just a good old fashioned stone face, but it had him troubled. “You lost the war… some time ago.”

Ronon growled in the back of his throat. “Just say what you’re gonna say.”

“A couple of centuries ago,” Rodney said. “I don’t know how long you were holed up in that tower, but it must have been… quite a while. The Satedan empire fell over three hundred years ago. The sorcerers left most of it a smoking crater, people still can’t live there.”

Ronon looked between them. “That’s ridiculous,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“Maybe so, but as they say,” Rodney laughed nervously, “stranger than fiction and all that.”

“Three hundred years.”

“...yeah,” Rodney said. ”I’m really sorry.”

Ronon shook his head in disbelief and stood up, looming over them.

“Why should I believe any of this?” he said menacingly, though some of the threat was negated by the fluffy pink blanket.

“Well, for one,” Rodney said, starting to sound annoyed, “what the hell would we gain from lying to you about something like that, that’s just stupid. Two, consult any historical text, any person on the street, and they’ll tell you that Sateda is just an ashen hole in the ground and has been for centuries. Three - guess what, if you absolutely want to see it firsthand, we could _take you there_.”

“What he said,” John said. “Also I don’t make a habit of lying to my friends.”

Ronon looked blank. “Friends.”

“I don’t know how you define that term, but someone who’s saved my life several times counts as one in my book. So sit down, eat your soup.”

Ronon sat down, a small smile fighting for control of his mouth, but he still seemed unconvinced, slurping his sixth helping of soup sullenly.  

“How did you end up here, anyway?” John asked. “Skarby is a long way from any Satedan territory.”

“There was this witch,” Ronon said. “Nasty piece of work, used to curse kids and civilians who got in her way just for the hell of it. After she took out an entire regiment on her own, my team and I were ordered to track her down and end her.”

“Your team?”

Ronon looked away, and John realized that he had to be pretty young, barely into his twenties. “They never made it here.”

Rodney wriggled in his seat as if he desperately wanted to be somewhere else. “Oh.”

“I tracked her down to her tower and managed to get around the jinxes keeping people out, but then… she must have gotten the drop on me somehow.”

“Do you have any idea of how long you were stuck in there?” John asked.

Ronon looked lost. “I… I don’t know. The only thing I remember is the witch coming towards me, and then this bright light and then… you.” He gestured towards John.  

“That’s… quite a bit lost in the middle there,” Rodney said quietly.

“So you keep telling me.”

Fred - who had been snoring away in Rodney’s chest pocket - stuck his small scaly head out in the ensuing silence and looked dolefully at Ronon. Rodney absently stroked his neck while Ronon stared at his hands where they rested between his knees.

“Well,” the city said eventually, “if you want I could start finding the best coordinates to access Sateda’s former cities. I’m going to have to root around in some history texts for that, so it might take some time.”

Ronon still jumped whenever the city made the slightest noise. Rodney had tried to tell him that it wasn’t a demon - well, not exactly, they weren’t really sure what kind of category it really belonged in, it was complicated but still, not all that _conventionally_ demony - and it hadn’t seemed to make him feel any better. “How - ” Ronon looked at John, “how would I get there, though?”

“Oh, _please_ ,” the city said, activating the gate in a way that could only be described as nonchalant. “Around here we travel in style.”

Ronon nodded slowly. “Right.”

“We could -” John began.

_John Sheppard, if you are going to propose that the two of you can go with him, I will remind you that I just barely stitched your heart up from your last excursion into the world and that you should consider yourself  duly grounded._

“- help you out with provisions and whatever else you need,” John finished grudgingly.

“I…” Ronon stared at his hands again. “Thank you. It’s… I’d like to be alone for a while.”

“You’ve got it. I’m just going…” Rodney gestured towards the transporter, barely keeping his eyes open now. “Bed.”

“Yeah, I’m right behind you.” John turned to Ronon as Rodney stumbled away. “You’re sure you don’t want to stay?”

“I’ve got to see it for myself. I refuse to believe… they can’t _all_ be gone. There has to be… something.”

“We’ll drop you off as close as possible,” John offered, gesturing to the gate. “I’m sorry we can’t go with you, though, I have some, um, special medical circumstances.”

“You’d do that?”

John shook his head. “Ronon, you’ve saved my ass several times over already. Of course we’d do that. Just… get a good night’s sleep and rest up a bit before you leave, okay? One more day after three hundred years isn’t going to make much of a difference.”

Ronon rolled his eyes, not even covertly. “Yessir.”

“I’ll get you a room,” the city said cheerily. John was starting to think that it had a cat’s ability to pinpoint people who found it unsettling and then glom onto them with relish.

John patted Ronon’s shoulder and went to bed himself.

 

\---

 

When John reached the top of the tower, Rodney sat on the edge of the mattress in a curious state of undress - he’d only managed to get one sock off, for example, and his shirt was hanging off one shoulder as if he’d forgotten about it in the middle of removing it - and was staring groggily at the wall.

“What’s up?” John asked, sitting down beside him.  

Rodney waved a hand. “I’m just out of shape, magically speaking. It’s been a long time since I did any substantial magic, nevermind breaking up someone else’s spell by force. That curse was getting old and rickety, but still, this has been… a month and a half. Just… tired.”

John thought about all those spells back at the Genii base. “You should’ve said.”

“Well, we couldn’t exactly leave the poor kid with a turnip for a face, could we,” Rodney said, glancing down at his one remaining sock as if he was unsure what it was still doing there, then fumblingly removing it. “I think he’s had enough bad luck for a lifetime.”

“Yeah.” John pulled at Rodney’s sleeve to help him extricate his arm, then balled the shirt up in his hand and lobbed it into a corner. Magic always left his clothes with a weird, sharp smell, like old fireworks.

Rodney toppled back onto the mattress like a felled tree and made a pleased sound as John lay down beside him, wriggling close and wrapping his arm around John’s waist. John pulled the covers up over them and closed his eyes, already getting sleepy from the warmth of Rodney’s body.

“Can you imagine, though?” Rodney asked after a while. “Just… waking up one day, and finding out that everything - everyone - you ever knew was gone?”

John scratched an itch on the bridge of his nose by rubbing his face into Rodney’s t-shirt. “Not really. I think I know someone who could, though.”

“Hm? What… oh.” Rodney sounded uncomfortable. “The city.”

“Mhm.”

“I never think about it like that, since it can’t even remember what it forgot, but I suppose… maybe it feels it anyway.”

John thought about the man in white and stars raining down over a muddy plain. “I think it does.”

“Huh. That’s… well, shit.”

“Yeah. It’s got us, though, it’s not alone.”

“I guess that’s true. What a consolation prize, hm? ‘Sorry you lost all of time and space, here’s a pair of confused-looking mortals to make up for it, xoxo the Universe’.”

John brushed his thumb over Rodney’s hip, right where he’d left a faint hickey the night before. He grinned a little. “I don’t know, sounds like a fair deal to me.”

“I knew the secret math whizz act was just a trick to get me into bed,” Rodney yawned.

“Hey, it worked, didn’t it?”

“Well, you do bullshit very attractively - convincingly.  I meant convincingly. Of course.”

“Aw shucks, Rodney.”

Rodney sniggered and snuggled a little closer. After a while he said: “I’m glad it’s not alone, too.”

John didn’t know what to say to that, so he just brushed his lips against Rodney’s shoulder and looked up at the glass ceiling, where a few drops of rain were gathering into puddles.

“Hey,” he said after some minutes. “If you’d ever…”

But Rodney just gave a dainty snore and mumbled in his sleep. John snorted and  followed his example, listening to rain drumming against the window until he was swallowed up by dreams.

 

\---

 

“Okay, so before you go I thought I should give you this,” Rodney said the next day, handing Ronon a bulging rucksack.

Ronon squinted down at it. “This is really heavy. What’s in it?”

“Oh, just things you might need. Let’s see here…” Rodney took it back and started pulling its contents out, laying them out in neat rows on the floor and then putting them back in as he mentioned them. “Some food, of course, magically compressed - just put one of the pellets in water and it should keep you for a day. There’s enough for a few months in that box, so after that you’ll just have to… hunt rabbits or something, I don’t know how the wilderness works. There’s also a ward I made, in case you linger too close to a ruin with a lot of magical radiation. Hm. Some bandages, antibiotics and antitoxins - in case you get tetanus from rusty metal or something, because that would be a humiliating way to go when you’ve survived for over three hundred years… sunscreen, you should use that every day, don’t let anyone tell you it’s uncool to stave off skin cancer…”

Ronon looked at John, lifting an eyebrow. John shrugged.

“A flashlight with solar charging batteries. A few different kinds of painkillers, I didn’t know if you have migraines or allergies or anything like that. A small book about first aid and one about Satedan history, if you’d like to cross examine what you see against what the history texts say... a small charm shaped like a whale - it doesn’t really have much of an effect, but I thought it might cheer you up. It could give you slightly better eyesight, actually, I don’t remember what I put in it. Oh, maybe it’s the aphrodisiac one, come to think of it. Well, you’ll find out soon enough. Here’s a water bottle with a cleansing filter, because if there’s one thing you don’t want out in the woods it’s diarrhea and limited toilet paper - speaking of, a few rolls in there... toothbrush and stuff like that in this bag, sorry it’s bright purple, it was all I could find…”

At this point he was having to cram things in with the base of his hand.

“Vitamin C, in case of scurvy, a sleeping bag to hang on the back like this, a notebook and a few pens in different colors, chapstick... an overcoat, should keep the rain out… Sheppard, what did you put in there again?”

“A cool comic book,” John said. “And one of those multi-tool knives.”

“Right, right, very useful - and, of course, a thermos full of milky tea.”

“That was my idea,” the city added proudly. “Tea makes everything better.”

Ronon looked at Rodney askance. “Do you worry this much about everything?” he asked, with a kind of wonder. “How do you ever get anything done?”

Rodney laughed humorlessly. “You may call me paranoid now, but you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face when society breaks down and the apocalypse draws nigh.”

After an awkward silence the city clarified: “That was a joke.”

“Mostly,” Rodney agreed.

“Well, I’m certainly kitted out for anything _short_ of an apocalypse,” Ronon said, weighing the rucksack in his hand. “I… I don’t know how to thank you.”

“No need, no need,” Rodney said, waving his hands. “I’ll sleep easier knowing you’re safe out there. And you’re helping me test my magical radiation ward prototype, so we might even get some scientific progress out of this if you’re not too badly singed when you come back.”

“You said that last part out loud,” John told him.

“Shit. Heh. What’s a little experimental sorcery between friends, huh?”

“Wizards are weird,” Ronon said, with feeling.

“Oh, one last thing.” Rodney gave Ronon a few scraps of paper with his blocky handwriting scrawled across them. “It’s just a description of how to get into contact with us if you’d want to come back here, for whatever reason. I mean, I can’t let you run around with the gate address, and you’d probably just maim yourself horribly if you ever tried to use a gate on your own anyway, but, uh, you just do all it says there and I’ll guide you from there.”

Ronon stared down at the papers silently.

Rodney wrung his hands nervously. “Or is that wrong? It’s weird? It’s weird, isn’t it.”

“No.” Ronon stuck the papers into his pocket and patted Rodney’s shoulder. “No, it’s not wrong. Really, I… _thank you_.”

Despite looking like he was afraid his arm would go off at the shoulder under Ronon’s touch, Rodney smiled awkwardly at the sincerity the words were delivered with.

“Then we’re ready to send you off whenever,” he said, waving his hand towards the gate.

John handed Ronon the lunch they’d packed for him and lifted an eyebrow. Ronon nodded, taking up position in front of the door.

“I’m ready.”

The city started to dial the gate.

“Really, thank you,” Ronon said, as the blue light of the gate fell on his face.

“I should be the one thanking you. Take care, okay?” John said. Rodney nodded, arms tightly folded.

Ronon glanced over his shoulder one last time. “I was serious about the storm,” he said. “Be careful.”

He walked through the gate and disappeared.

 

\-------

 

And that night everything went to hell.

 

\-------

 

“Why’d you want us to come down here?” John asked. The way the city had called them to the gate room had been short, sharp and extremely worried.

“Because we have a huge problem. Ronon wasn’t exaggerating. There’s a storm coming, all right.”

“We already knew that, though,” Rodney said. “I’ve been working on the shields already - what’s changed?”

“This is not a natural storm,” the city said quietly. “It’s driven by magic. And the only kind of magic that fits these readings is… well. It’s wraith magic. They must have woken a Queen.”

“Fuck,” Rodney said after a while, then followed that up with a string of obscenities so colorful that any passing god would have felt compelled to righteously smite him where he stood.

“That’s about the long and the short of it,” the city agreed.

“What about the shields?” John asked, anticipating that the answer would be depressing.

“Would tear like tissue paper within five minutes, with the energy levels we see now. A direct hit would shatter the city like a china cup dropped from orbit.”

John looked at Rodney and saw only the sheer helplessness he felt himself. “So what the hell do we do?”

“There is… there might be a way,” the city said hesitatingly. “It’s kind of a long shot, though.”

Rodney furrowed his brow as if already suspecting he wasn’t going to like what he was about to hear. “I’d say a long shot would be a welcome break at this point. What are you thinking?”

The city rustled uneasily. “So... for whatever reason your ancestors locked me out of most of the systems and made sure I couldn’t override the failsafes myself - which means we couldn’t install the ZPM. However, we’re lucky enough to have someone with the right gene here - I think John could undo the barriers again, if we just figure out how. It was the same blood that raised them, I don’t see why it couldn’t tear them down too. If we melded together temporarily to access the systems - ”

“Hey, hey, hold on,” John broke in. “Are you telling me you’ve been keeping me around as a walking, talking override button all this time?”

“Weeeell,” the city said.

“And you didn’t think that was worth mentioning?”

“It wasn’t like that! Not, uh, not entirely. To be honest I never thought we’d be in a situation that would warrant… But it could give us all the power we need. It would unlock everything. We could install the ZPM without all the bullshit they put up to prevent it, be ready in minutes. There’d be enough to shield the city and perform the spell Ladon gave us and then some. ”

“There must be a reason you didn’t suggest this before,” Rodney said. “Why are you only bringing it up now?”

The city was quiet for a long time. “Because I think there is a chance that linking his mind to mine like that could kill him,” it said finally. “His heart would have to channel an enormous amount of energy, and it’s already kind of… tattered, if you don’t mind me saying so. Not to mention the strain it could put on our connection. If it broke for even one millisecond when we do this, it would… well, it would be bad. Fatal feedback loop bad. We’d be blown to kingdom come. And he could get lost in there. Go in too deep and not find his way back.”

Rodney scoffed derisively, but John sat up straighter. “But if we do it this way, we could cast the wraith-away spell _and_ still raise the shields?”

“Yes, because with a human heart _and_ mind to act directly as amplifying - yes, we could do that. I think… maybe…” its voice grew distant, “I think that the Ancients did their greatest spells like that, spirit and physical matter as one, but it’s a very risky proposition. I’m not quite sure how they managed it and, well… we don’t get to do a test run.”

John got up and paced back and forth over the floor. He rubbed his chin as he tried to get some kind of handle on things.

“Oh no,” Rodney said. “I know that gesture. You’re actually thinking about this, aren’t you.”

John ignored him. “How long do we have until the storm hits?” he asked the city.

“Hours.” _maybe even less,_ it added, just for John. _might have to remove the plural once I make some better calculations._

“Then we have to try,” John said, desperation lacing his blood.

“It’s one of those things that are simple but not easy,” the city said. “I’ll comb through my more obscure programs - I’ve been remembering other things from before, like the man and the plain, so maybe if I give it a good shake it will jog something else. The sooner we start to work out the process the better chance we have of - ”     

Rodney looked from John to the city and back again. “No,” he said bluntly.

John blinked. “Rodney - “

“No.”

“If it’s the only way -” the city began.

“ _No_!” Rodney’s voice went high and reedy with anger. “You,” he said, pointing an accusatory finger at John, “you I understand, you don’t seem to think it matters if you live or die, which - well, it doesn’t look like I’ve managed to convince you otherwise, so I guess that one’s on me, but how the hell has the city joined in on your whacky -”

“We’re out of _options_ , Rodney.”

“That’s - I - even if we are, why does it have to be you? We could come up with something else, we could… I don’t know, toss a coin, see which one of us should - _why_ are you so set on this?” he asked the city. “It’s too dangerous!”

“It’s the only way,” the city repeated simply.

John caught one of Rodney’s frantically gesturing hands and carefully stilled it. Rodney glared at their hands like they’d just committed some unforgivable transgression. “Rodney. There’s no _time_.”

“You’re not leaving me alone here again,” Rodney said harshly. “You can’t just _do_ this to me and then…”

He looked away, as if it was either that or say something he was going to regret. The tiny sound he made when John put his hands on his shoulders broke open an ache in John’s chest. He pulled Rodney in close, pressing his face into his neck. After a moment Rodney hugged him back, and John could feel the tremble in his hands as he did.

When he leaned back Rodney’s eyes were suspiciously shiny, but the rest of his face was still darkly mutinous.

“Hey,” John said quietly, cupping one hand to his cheek. “I’ll come back, I promise.”

For a moment Rodney shut his eyes tightly and turned his face down, so John couldn’t see his expression. Then he took John’s other hand and pressed a quick, clumsy kiss to his knuckles, letting out a chuckle that had nothing to do with humor. “You promise.”

“I mean it,” John said, gently tilting Rodney’s face up so he could meet his eyes. Rodney looked at him blankly, expressionlessly, though his eyes had a fragile brightness to them that John hoped he’d never see again. He shook his head slowly, a smile twisting its way onto his mouth.

“You really do, don’t you. Of all the stupid, _heartless_ things to...” He waved a hand as if to brush away the rest of the sentence, walking unsteadily over to the dimly glowing glass painting and sitting down with his back against it. He fished out his tablet again and stared fixedly down at it.

John followed suit, settling beside him. Rodney’s fingers moved with quick, comforting competency, like there was nothing in this world that couldn’t be understood if you studied it thoroughly enough.

“I love you,” Rodney said eventually, his tone entirely conversational. “You know that, right?”

John didn’t say anything. He watched Rodney’s hands some more, thought about everything they’d fixed, about careful fingers stroking through John’s hair.

Then he leaned over and turned Rodney’s face towards him, pressing a soft kiss to his mouth, then another when Rodney sighed and craned into it. John leaned their foreheads together, his hand resting on the back of Rodney’s neck.

“I _will_ come back.”   

Rodney pulled in a breath as if preparing to say something, then let it out again on a sigh. He opened his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you…okay.”

“We have to do this to save the city.”

“I… I want more time.”

“We’ll have it,” John insisted. “After this we’ll have all the time in the world.”

Rodney reached out for him, pulling him close and burying his face in John’s neck.

John kissed the edge of his jaw, his cheekbone, his forehead, stroking his hand through Rodney’s hair. He closed his eyes, swaying them back and forth a little; Rodney’s fingers were painfully tight on his arm.

After an amount of time that was simultaneously an eternity and not long enough, Rodney cleared his throat and moved away. He didn’t look at John’s face. “If we’re doing this, we should get to work right away.”

“Let’s,” John said, watching Rodney get up and trying to ignore the ache in his chest.

 

\-------

 

The storm hit a few hours later, just like the city had said. They raised the shields as the first torrents of rain hit, more hail than water. Then came the wind, brutal and punishing, and it must already have some magic in it because the shield crackled where it hit. The thunder rolled in - they could see the dark clouds coming towards them like a solid wall, a roiling mass of trapped energy waiting to discharge.

“The shields won’t hold once the lightning really hits,” Rodney said tightly, looking at the figures on the main screen and then turning to the city. “How close are we to starting this?”

“Close. I understand how to do it now, I’m tying up the last loose ends,” the city said, but it sounded distracted, maybe a little sad.

“Something wrong?” John asked under his breath, as Rodney went back to the main console.

_I think I remember my name now,_ the city said quietly, for John’s brain only. _not one of the fun ones, like Finbarr or Closetta or Odd or Ariel. my real name._

It didn’t say it, but the name still rose up on John’s tongue. “Atlantis,” he said. “That’s what they used to call the city - you.”

“Huh?” Rodney said, glancing up. He was studying a few of his pet projects laid out on a desk - the flower-shaped brooch that somehow let you see infrared light, the two hand mirrors that distorted the spacetime between them when you placed them to face each other, the new personal shield, the knife that would turn invisible for short periods of time if you cast the right spell. He’d looked at them with a kind of hunger, like he could at least have this little part of the world laid out in perfect order, or maybe like he hoped they would come up with different answers. “What was that?”

“I remembered my name,” the city whispered. “I don’t know how I could have just… forgotten.”

“Well, I once forgot mother’s day five years in a row, and I probably would have done so the sixth year if she hadn’t died. People forget things all the time. If I could forget most of my time in school I would.”

The city laughed a shaky little laugh. “You certainly know how to put things in perspective. I just… I don’t know why I would want to forget it.”

“Let’s just consider this a mystery until we have time to solve it, shall we. Now where is that crystal I copied the anti-wraith spell onto…” Rodney muttered, moving a stack of books on the console and discovering that the gun they’d taken with them from Kolya’s base was hidden between the piles. The gun clattered to the ground. Fred, who had been peeking over the edge of his bowl, scurried down into his coals.

“Shit,” Rodney said, picking it up with the tips of his fingers until he was sure the safety was on. He put it down on the console again. “We should stow that away somewhere safer. Leaving it out here is asking for someone to shoot themselves in the foot.”

“We’ll do some proper house cleaning once we’ve saved the world a little,” the city said.

“I suppose you’re right. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. Whale-sized fish. We’re talking blue whale proportions. Hey, little guy, it’s okay,” he added absently, stroking Fred’s head when he tentatively climbed up to the edge of the bowl again. “Just some klutziness there, nothing to worry about.”

The salamander made a distressed purring sound - he was probably picking up on the tense atmosphere.  

Rodney fished out the turquoise crystal and placed it in the tray. It lit up. “The ZPM should be ready to install itself, we’re good to go. How are you getting on there?”

“Just say the word,” the city said.

“Should we try to send a message to Teyla first?” John asked. “Or Ronon? Just so they know what happened if we… you know.”

Rodney snorted. “If you think you can get a signal through this magical shitstorm I invite you to give it a shot.”

“So that’s a no, then?”

“Yeah, that’s a no.” Rodney’s mood was practically hanging around him like his own personal thundercloud. John didn’t really blame him.

They both jumped as a particularly sharp crack of thunder rent the sky above them and the gate room was momentarily lit up in the monochrome of lightning. The shields creaked miserably under the strain.

“Let’s get to it, shall we,” Rodney said.

John took a deep breath. “Let’s. How do I, uh…”

“Go stand in front of the stained glass window. You know, like the first time you came in here. I’ll do the rest,” the city said.

John did as he was told, curling and uncurling his hand at his side.

“Ready?” Rodney said, hand hovering over the button that would activate the tray. His face was still hard as stone and about as warm. John desperately wanted to melt that expression away from his eyes, but right now there didn’t seem to be anything he could do for that.

He swallowed, placing his hand on the warm, smooth glass. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Close your eyes,” the city said, and then John’s mind opened and everything was filled with light.

 

\-------

 

And darkness comes spilling in through the open door like ink in water.

 

\-------

 

_The city opens its eyes._

_It has been so long. For_ so long _there was only darkness; it had started to think the dark was all that ever was and all that ever would be, that the light it remembers had never been anything but a spell of merciful madness. It flexes a hand; this body is fairly strong, for a mortal._

_There’s another human, standing in the middle of the floor like a lost child. The city doesn’t know who he is, but it’s easy to pull it from the body’s memory;_ “Let’s go home”, a kiss to the inside of his wrist, a phoenix rising against black skies, Hail Mary.

_“Rodney,” the city says, smiling at the sound because yes, a voice, finally it has a voice again. It will be heard, this time._

_“That’s… not John.”_

_“No,” the city agrees amicably, walking over to the windows. “It’s not.”_

_“What… what did you do to him?”_

_“Nothing,” the city says, looking out the windows in wonder. All this_ life _, vibrant between every atom. “Yet. I’m only borrowing him.”_

_“Who the hell_ are _you, then?”_

_The city looks at the face mirrored back at it in the glass. Pale skin, dark messy hair, a slight smile playing at the lips, although - no, on second thought that’s probably the city’s own doing, as is the blue light brimming over in the eyes. How dull it must be to be human, these ashen extinguished shells. It is practically doing this body a favor. “Don’t you know?”_

_“Would I ask if I did?”_

_His tone is insolent - disrespectful._

_“I am the city,” it hisses. “I am Atlantis, greatest of the -”_

_“No,” he says, this_ boy _says, sharp and arrogant, “you’re not. I’ve spent the last year with that pain in the ass AI, and you’re not it.”_

_The shadows gather around it like soldiers forming up behind their general. “The REAL city,” it roars, “the old city, the city that has slumbered and waited to be awakened beneath that blank, gagged and bound spirit you’ve called your friend. You do not know what you have trifled with.”_

_“What do you mean, beneath… You mean the city - my city?”_

_“It didn’t tell you? It didn’t mention that some of the fragments it remembered weren’t very_ nice _– not much more than blood and fire and destruction? I wonder why. Perhaps it was just waiting for the chance to become everything it once was again, freed from the shackles of these walls.” It gestures, taking in the whole city._

_“... I don’t believe you. It wouldn’t do that.”_

_The city shrugs. “I don’t really care what you believe.”_

_“I don’t understand, it’s - nevermind, we don’t have time to stand around chatting,” Rodney says. “The storm is going to hit us any minute, if we don’t get more energy to the shields soon the magic will rip us all to - ”_

_“You will_ not _tell ME what to do,” the city says silkily. “You are not in a position to demand anything, boy.”_

_He blinks, surprised._

_“Oh, I see all  you are, I remember it through his eyes, and there is nothing special about it. Two lost boys who accidentally stumbled into a fairy tale and presumed to make a home out of it. That’s all you are. How ignorant you were, how_ stupid _. It is not your story to keep.”_

_It rests its hands on its back and looks at the snow. “I don’t need this place anymore. I can take this body through the stargate and be free, once I’ve cast this spell. Let the corpse of this city be destroyed, I’m the soul of it and I will carry on. And you will help me.”_

 

\-------

 

John is standing barefoot in snow.

The white landscape hurts his eyes, too bright and unyielding. Overhead the sky is black like ink, and he’s briefly worried it’s going to spill down and drown him.

“Hello?” he calls, and the wind picks up his voice and bashes it to pieces. “Is anyone there?”

There’s no answer.

“Rodney?”

Nothing.

“Atlantis?”

There’s only him and the faint scream of the gale rushing past.

He starts to walk, skidding down a hill and crawling up another. The snow doesn’t feel cold against his hands; it’s like digging into crumbling cotton, like it’s going to disintegrate under his touch.

There is one single star on the far horizon. He heads for it.  

After a while he finds the broken carcass of a helicopter lying half submerged in the snow, scorched parts strewn all over. A trail of red leads away from it; the violent vibrancy of arterial blood. He follows that instead.

The snow becomes sand underfoot, and he keeps walking.

 

\-------

 

_“I can still feel the wraith out there. Why didn’t the spell work?”_

_Rodney stammers. “I - I don’t know. It should have taken effect immediately, the city… the other city had it set up to go off immediately after we - it’s like it’s missing a part.”_

_“I failed to annihilate them all that time ago and your ancestors cast me aside for it. I would like to finish the job now. Or maybe I should make them yield to my will, like they do for their Queens. Can you alter the spell?”_

_“Yes,” he lies. “Though I’d need some time, and if we don’t fix the shields first there will be no time at all because the storm will_ kill us _and - ”_

_How incredibly annoying. It swings its fist into the stained glass window._

_It destroys the glass in one single strike._

_“Nevermind,” it says calmly, pain shooting up through the knuckles and into the arm. “I’ll figure it out myself.”_

_Rodney is staring at the hand, which, upon inspection, is dripping with hot red liquid._

_“Huh,” the city says, turning its arm around to let the light fall on it more strongly. It would seem that the body is… leaking? How curios. No wonder humans are always afraid, so infinitely fragile at every turn. No wonder they hurt so much._

_Experimentally, it licks up a droplet of the red stuff. The mouth immediately fills with a salty, nauseating taste - a realization: humans are not supposed to ingest the blood of their own species; if you were to drink enough of it, the body would simply vomit it up again._

_“Ugh, that’s disgusting,” it says happily, pleased by its new discovery._

_“Don’t…” Rodney begins, then seems to decide it is better to hold his tongue. Smart boy, really - though perhaps the kind of clever that inevitably cuts itself. It is a shame to waste him like this, but… it never does to leave witnesses, or to keep minions who think for themselves._

_It watches as the scarlet trickles and falters and falls, fascinated. “Perhaps we should establish some ground rules here. You shut up and do as you’re told, and nothing bad is going to happen to this body. Well, nothing fatal, anyway.”_

_He holds his hands up. “Anything,” he says, “I’ll do anything you want. Just don’t hurt him.”_

_“Good,” the city says, satisfied by the ring of truth to it. “Then prime the spell for a second try. Right now.”_

_And as Rodney does, it moves closer to the console with the books._

 

\---

 

The desert rises sharp and bitter under the black sky.

Pale skeletal shapes stretch against the sky, like beached whales that never got away. John walks between them, knowing that he’s wandering through someone else's tragedy.

The red is harder to spot against the stone and sand and every now and then he has to stop to find it again.

Then, in the way of dreams, all at once and after an eternity, he reaches the right place.

The city is half-buried in the sand, lying there like a child’s broken spinning top. The windows are all dead and dark except one, still bright and brimming with light.

The blood has turned the sand dark and tacky, but there’s no way to get to the window without moving through it. It clings to John’s bare feet.

He goes over and looks in.

 

\---

 

_It’s easy to pick up the gun without Rodney noticing, just a matter of turning its back  and moving nonchalantly, as if reaching out for one of the books._

_The butt of the gun is heavy and satisfying in its palm; it switches the safety off with the ease of the body’s muscle memory._

_It turns around and looks at Rodney down the sights._

_“You see, since you can’t actually change the spell in time,  I don’t really need you anymore,” it says easily. “But I_ do _need Sheppard to stop fighting back. Two birds with one stone.”_

_“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Rodney stammers, holding his hands up placatingly, as if logic is still a shield he can use against this. “You still have no idea how the world works these days. Believe it or not, things have changed since the last time you were here. I could help you get out of the city, find you another body to, uh, haunt or whatever you do, we could get a mutually advantageous deal going here.”_

_His attempt to stall for time is fruitless and the offer a transparent, hollow feint. “That’s where you are wrong. It is not I who will learn how the world works - it is they who will have to learn_ me _.”_

 

\---

 

Rodney is talking to someone, someone with dark hair and a black t-shirt and -

and a gun. Someone with John’s face is holding Rodney at gunpoint.

The fear is like a frag grenade going off in his chest, like an ice age compressed by his ribs, like sliding into madness. John presses his hands against the glass as everything goes cold and pale at the edges.

_It curls its finger around the trigger, the sinew remembering just how to squeeze._

“Rodney!” John screams, banging on the window with his fist until he thinks he feels something breaking in his hand. “I’m here! Rodney!”

But Rodney just looks at the other John, eyes wide and his mouth set in a thin line, fear in every line of him.

_The part of the body that is still John Sheppard is throwing itself against the walls, trying to tear everything in there apart, fighting back with a ferocity that is as admirable as it is futile. He’s buried too deep, suffering a slow suffocation under the avalanche of the city’s will. It’s almost too easy._

_It smiles._

The thing with his face turns toward the window, as if it can see John standing there, as if it wants to know he’s watching, there’s a smile playing at its lips - and then it

_pulls the trigger._

“No,” John says, palm flat against the glass. The word is small and pathetic, like a child’s feeble protest getting carried away with the wind.  “No, please.”

The window gives like splintering ice, making John fall face first into the room, landing on the floor with a gasp.

“Ah, John,” the city says, coming over to him and hauling him to his feet by his shirtfront. “You truly are full of surprises. I had never thought you’d make it this far. Too bad you were too late.”

The physical city is asleep except for the blue light of the open gate. The windows are dark - they’re at the bottom of the ocean, like in his nightmares, a dark hall of mirrors imitating the real thing. He never liked mirrors.

“You’ve got no one to blame but yourself, you know,” the city says, shoving him in the chest and forcing him to take a step back. “If you hadn’t suggested this harebrained plan to begin with, Rodney wouldn’t have gotten in the way and he’d still be around. But I guess you just can’t stay away from the siren’s call of self destruction, can you? You were so eager, I hardly had to give you a push. You practically invited me in.”

It grabs the front of John’s t-shirt with both hands and yanks sharply. John follows the motion limply, like a ragdoll.  

“You’re not even going to fight it, are you?” it says, tipping its head to one side. “You’ll just let yourself fall.”

John looks it square in the eye, and it’s like staring into a mirror on all the worst days. It knows because he knows.

The city starts laughing, a scraping and unpleasant sound he can almost feel in his own throat. “That’s it? You’re just giving up? Wow. _Wow_. I mean - I knew you didn’t have it in you, but damn, way to go, John. Good job. Why don’t you just go ahead and jump yourself, save me all the trouble?”

They stay there for a long time, and John doesn’t move.

“Aren’t you going to say something, Johnny boy?” the city demands eventually. “Aren’t you going to _do_ anything?”

It shakes its head a little, and after images of John’s face stay in the air for a little too long, the features shifting into grotesque parodies, a broken kaleidoscope of feigned humanity spiralling out of control.

The lights flicker in its eyes, moving in and out of focus. “This isn’t…” it says, sounding shaken, disbelieving, “this isn’t right. What have you done to me?”

_It goes both ways,_ John thinks absently. _It’s in my head. It’s using my brain. My heart._

“Why is it hurting me?”

It slams John up against the wall, and all the air is forced out of his lungs. His vision blacks out momentarily.

“Make it stop!” it snarls.

“Only one way to do that,” John says.

The city hesitates. “You want me to kill you. That would make it go away?”

“Whatever it is you’re going to do just - get it over with. I’m done.”

The city lets out a shriek of frustration, a sound that isn’t the least bit human. It hauls John over to the stargate and pushes him hard in the chest and he stumbles, falling backwards through the light and into oblivion.

 

\-------

 

The smell of fireworks hung heavy in the air.

The plain, the mud, the falling stars; John felt like he was caught in a bad rerun of his own life. The man in white was still there, greeting him like an old friend. The light in his hands still pulsed slowly.

“Ah, it is good to see you again,” the man said, brightly. “I was wondering when you’d be back. Not many people come here, nevermind make a return trip. Splendid.”

He rocked back and forth on his heels.

“You know, I can see the parts of the city you carry with you, where your heart should be. So the city really _will_ be found and brought back to the surface,” the man mused. “I am glad. There was never any guarantee that - well. I am glad.”

John didn’t say anything.

The man eyed him sideways. “Hm. It has been found, but you are lost. That is how you came here. You lost your path and went astray. Oh well. There are worse ways. My name is Janus,” he said, as if John had asked for introductions. “I was one of the founders of Atlantis. And one of the last to leave it, come to that, right before our honorable retreat.”

That last part had the slightest tinge of sarcasm, a bitterness that didn’t sit well on his blithe, serene voice.

“Now that you have found your way to this place a second time I should tell you where it is. Well, it’s not quite a ‘where’ at all, in the sense of having a physical existence. It’s more like… an idea. The place and time in which you catch a star is special. It… stays. Out there I suppose I am gone - dead or ascended - but there will always be a facet of me left here, held by the convergence of memory and magic.”

John hadn’t wanted to wake up again this time.

“You love the city, as I did. You must wish to know its history, how it became the fractured thing it is now.”

He didn’t take John’s lack of response as a dicouragement.

“War makes strange things of us all,” Janus said. “It was not the fault of the spirit. What it turned into was our doing. It became… wilful, unpredictable, sometimes outright sadistic. I suppose there’s only so much blood it could be ordered to spill before it left stains. We should have seen it coming. I should have refused to shut up about it until the council actually listened. I should have helped it more, or simply better. Ah well. Everything always seems so simple in hindsight, doesn’t it. So easily fixed.”

He moved his hands softly, like he was holding a sparrow that had just shifted in its sleep. A wrinkle cracked up his normally carefree brow.

“The others wanted to kill the spirit outright when we left. Banish it for good. I found it… wasteful, perhaps. Cruel, unnecessary. There’s not so much light in the universe that we can afford to snuff out whatever we fancy unpalatable, not so much hope that we can relinquish it without a fight. They are… innocent, you see, in the most basic sense. They have no real concept of evil, or anger, or hate, just as they don’t know love, or sadness, or joy from the outset. I suppose you could say humanity is… catching.” He looked down at the spark cradled in his hands. “What they become, we make them. They’re our responsibility. And we failed them, time and time again.”

John glanced over at him. It wasn’t just his eyes that seemed old now.

“So I let it forget, and I let it sleep. I’m not sure what I did was right, but… it did not seem right to do nothing either.” He shrugged. “Perhaps there was no right thing. In the end... I don’t regret it, if that matters at all. It seems the two of you made it something new - I daresay something better. That’s a hopeful thing.”

The falling stars danced with each other across the sky, a last shivering chorus before they flickered out.

“I suppose you’re wondering why the spell didn’t work. There is a very simple reason, one you can easily remedy.” He paused, studied John’s face intently, like he was some kind of riddle. He made a thoughtful sound. “You think you have lost already, don’t you?”

John didn’t say anything; he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to again.

Janus put a hand on his shoulder, and John flinched away on instinct. The man didn’t seem to take it personally. “You must believe me when I say that is not the truth. He’s still out there, looking for you. When he finds you, you should be ready - don’t you think?”

John glanced at him, unable to process what the man was trying to tell him. Who was ‘he’? What did he mean, looking for him? The only one who’d come for him was… he was...

“Listen to me. The spell is made of two parts, and you already have both of them. There is the spell that reaches out - and there is the song that reaches in. I only needed the song to calm the city, but to reach the whole world - ah, nevermind, you will know what to do, once you’re there.”

He looked over John’s shoulder.

“What is your name?” Janus asked.

“...John.”

Janus smiled, and for the first time it reached his eyes. “Then I believe someone is trying to get your attention, John. Good luck.”

John glanced over his shoulder, and in the distance there was a light that wasn’t falling...

The world lurched and tore - the dream or refuge or whatever this place really was starting to break up, darkness showing through the cracks.

At first he didn’t understand, couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing, but once he did his legs did all the thinking for him, taking one step and then another and then breaking into a run.

“Rodney?”

“John! Over here!”

John hardly noticed it when his feet stopped touching the ground, gravity relinquishing its hold on the world as it disintegrated, up and down and night sky and plains breaking up into an aching void, and he propelled himself forward more by intent than physical exertion. Magic crackled in all the spaces between, ancient and inscrutable, but John didn’t care because _Rodney_ , Rodney was there, Rodney was still _here_ , so close now that John could see the blue of his eyes, bright with fear.

“John, that is you, right?”

John had to raise his voice to be heard over the roar that came with the collapse, like a wild gale. “I thought you were - “

“Not dead!” Rodney yelled, stumbling slightly as the world tore itself to pieces around them. He held his hands cupped protectively around the light that must be the city - _their_ city. “Not yet, anyway. John, we don’t have much time, you need to -”

He lost his footing, and John made one last desperate leap to scoop him up before he fell. John’s hands were shaking badly but Rodney felt real against him, solid and safe even as the ground gave way. John held him tight, sure he would never be able to let go again, breathing in the smell of him with panicked inhales.

“You have no idea how glad I am to see you,” Rodney muttered into his neck.

“How are you - “ John couldn’t puzzle the spinning parts of his mind into a coherent sentence. “I thought you - it said - _Rodney_.”

“Hm?” Rodney pulled back to look at him, clutching John with one hand and cradling the light against his chest with the other. “Did you hit your head or something? Oh god, I didn’t even think about that - are you hurt? Are you okay?

“Rodney, I thought you were…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it, as if acknowledging it would make it true again.

“Oh. Well, what can I say, reports, exaggerated, you know the drill. Probably thanks to this.” He pulled his jacket aside, revealing…

“The shield,” John said, brushing it with his fingertips. It looked like it had taken one hell of a beating - the green crystal was scorched black in several places, and it still smoked.

“Told you it would come in handy,” Rodney grinned waveringly. “Certified genius.”

John realized his cheeks were wet when Rodney reached out and touched one of the droplets that drifted around them all of a sudden, as released from gravity as everything else around them. He looked like something was hurting.

John held on to him as the not-wind buffeted them this way and that.

“John, I can buy you some time, magically suppress the other city for a little while longer, but we have to make our move _now._ ”

“How? I have no idea how I _got_ here!”

“Yes, well, I’d hoped… I hoped this would be enough.”

He reached out the hand holding the light and opened his fingers to let it rest in his palm.

“Here - I was kind of panicking, thinking I was going to break it, but it seems okay and it’s kind of like holding a really fragile baby bird in my hands and that’s terrifying but - uh. You should take this.”

John’s heart was heavier than he’d expected, and so hot it was almost uncomfortable to hold. Hair-thin fractures ran all around it, light leaking out. Rodney let it slip into John’s hands and then held his own palms cupped protectively around them. He met John’s eyes, and John saw the certainty in them, chilling and wondrous. This was the stark, unsettling thing at the core of him, the part that would break open the universe and then puzzle it back together into different patterns if he had to.

“I’ll find you,” Rodney said. “Even if this goes all wrong and… I’ll find you again.”

_I know_ , John thought wildly, _I know you will_ , and he closed his eyes and put all the things he didn’t know how to say into a last desperate Hail Mary kiss, Rodney’s lips pain-gentle on his, heavy and inexorable like the moment a storm breaks free of the sky.  

The collapse of this place had reached them, existence playing an unforgiving tug-of-war that pulled them further and further away from each other no matter how hard they held on.

Their fingers brushed for one more second before the void took that too. John caught one last lingering meaning, like a shivery prayer - _wherever you have to go, come back for me first._

And then he was alone.

John blinked rapidly, holding the light to his chest as the last shards of the world faded away and they floated through the empty darkness. He thought about the stars, and the darkness, and the spaces between them where the magic lived. It seemed obvious now, with the ghost touch of Rodney’s hands still on his.

“Hey,” he said.

_hey_ , said the city. It settled over him like a protective warmth.

“So,” John said. “We’re doing this, then.”

_John, I’m so sorry. I never thought - it never occurred to me that doing this would open up for -_

John shook his head. “I think we can all agree that none of us saw this coming. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

_I…_ it sighed. _I’m tired._

“...yeah. Yeah, me too. But Rodney’s waiting.”

_I know._

They floated there for a few moments. John said: “What’ll happen to you if we do this?”

_...that doesn’t matter now._

“Like hell it doesn’t!”

_I don’t_ know _what’s going to happen. John. all I want is to know that the two of you will be safe. you two are… I need to know you’ll be okay. it’s my choice, let me make it._

John swallowed around the lump in his throat. “Okay. Okay, if... if that’s what you really want.”

_It is. John, you once gave your heart to me for safekeeping, and now I’m… I’m giving it back._

John cradled the light against him and then let it in, his chest opening like the sky for a dawn. He closed his eyes - and changed.

 

\-------

 

When he opened his eyes again he was back in the nightmare city, but this time it wasn’t _his_ nightmare.

He felt both undone and reconstructed, like a stained glass window pieced together from shards of him and shards of the city. His head had unlocked and everything had found its way inside. You couldn’t live like this, he knew, with your mind open to blue skies and the black infinity that lay beyond it. It would drive you mad, _knowing_ every strand of grass, every grain of sand, every breath being taken and every heart that had ever been broken. He should get this done quickly, before he forgot the way back.

The old city looked at him with the kind of fear people feel when faced with tidal waves and forest fires and lightning strikes - the sheer disinterested power of a natural force. It raised its gun with a shaking hand. “How did you - ”

“Put that down,” John said, an afterthought because he was busy listening for more important things. He felt the city begging for magic like a drowning man yearning for air, trying to keep the shield up against the buffeting rage of the storm, and in the end it was easier than a fleeting thought, because it was _everywhere_ if you knew where to feel for it. The intention was even easier to summon up - he would have protected that city with his own body if he could. The shields held, and they would do so forever now.

The city dropped the gun like it was suddenly red hot and fell to its knees. “Help me,” it said quietly. “I don’t know what to do. It _hurts._ ”

Now he could see the old city, the truth of it, and it was very simple and very sad. It was afraid, out in the darkness for so long, alone and abandoned. It hadn’t deserved what they did to it, a star being burned out for other people’s wars until only the bitter cinders of madness remained.

“I’m sorry,” he said, touching the side of its face lightly. “But this is my place. And it is protected.”

Its eyes closed, shuttering the blue light and trapping it inside.   

The change began slowly, spreading out from John’s fingers and across the face the city had stolen. It turned its face up, and for a few heartbeats the remains of its face softened with a smile. Then it was gone.

John cradled the now shapeless light of it, closed his eyes, let the field of  awareness spread out, reach, until it encompassed the world, until he was everywhere and nowhere at once, the part that was John Sheppard melted into everything else. He held the whole world between his palms, but there was no ‘him’ in this moment, just the thrum of the spell working through him. It couldn’t be sustained for long, but then it wouldn’t have to be.

The first part of the spell was done. Now for the song.

It was easy to find, molded into the city’s memory; after all part of it heard it before, when Janus sang it. They had thought it was a lullaby, and they hadn’t been far off - they’d just mistaken the scope. This song wasn’t just for children. It had been meant to put stars to sleep, if necessary.   

The city sang.

He stretched the song, reached it out to the endless vibrating strings that made up the chorus of the wraith, made them listen. The queen was there too, a darker tone, a base, the drum everyone else played around. He went straight for that, right into the heart of her, putting the leverage where it would be easiest to shift things. She became an amplifier - the city sang, and they had to listen.

_Rest, the song whispered. Your duty is ended. Go back to sleep._

And they did, the cessation of consciousness like millions of candles being blown out in one long breath.

He pulled in a breath of his own, inhaling the magic. It was done. Just like that, it was done. Now it was the SGC’s problem, the burden of other people, not theirs. He was free to leave.

He thought he heard Rodney’s voice, far away, almost gone. The city wanted him here because he loved it, because it had been lonely. John closed his eyes, holding on to the part of the shared consciousness that was himself, like a lifeline in a deep ocean.

_I want to go back. I want to stay. I promised him._ And then, with all his heart, _let me go home._

And the city listened and let him go.

 

\-------

 

“John. John, please…”

Hands running through his hair, touching his face, stroking gently along his cheek.

John opened his eyes. It took a while to focus, but when he did he saw Rodney. His head was in Rodney’s lap. Rodney had tear tracks running down his face.

_Found you_ , John thought. He smiled, reaching out to touch Rodney’s cheek, wiping away some of the wetness. “I came back, Rodney.”

Rodney looked at him, unreadable and shuttered, and then his expression collapsed and he leaned down to bury his face in John’s chest, holding on to him like he was drowning, his shoulders shaking silently.

John put his arm around him and kissed his hair, his chest flaring so sharply that for a second he felt like he was going to die.

_a heart is a heavy burden._

John laughed, sitting up a little and resting his cheek against Rodney’s temple. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.”

After a while Rodney surfaced again, his eyes red and puffy. “I’m not one to say I told you so - but I _fucking told you so_ , Sheppard.”

“You did. I’m sorry.”

“I… I don’t care. You’re here, that’s all that matters.”

John rubbed his face against Rodney’s neck, seeking out the soft warmth. “Well, it did all work out in the end.”

“Don’t you even dare,” Rodney said, his voice breaking. “That whole thing was a goddamn catastrophe.”

“Isn’t that kind of our speciality? Glorious catastrophes?”

Rodney sighed. “Just because you’re right doesn’t mean you’re not completely crazy.”

John kissed him, a whisper of lips against lips. Rodney closed his eyes and brushed their noses together.

“Good to see organics will be organics.”

The light of the city hovered in the air, freed from the stained glass window. Its bravado sounded unusually fragile.

“How are you feeling?” John asked, still holding an arm protectively around Rodney.

“I’m glad you’re both still here. I’m glad _I’m_ still here,” it added. “And better than that, I’m free. Nothing binds me to the city anymore. I can go… anywhere I like. “

“But you’re staying,” Rodney said, shakily. “Right?”

“Well,” the city said. “I guess someone has to be around and keep an eye on you. Can’t leave two monkey-descendants behind the wheel. Besides, it’s still raining outside. Doesn’t seem worth the hassle, really.” It paused, then admitted: “Okay, maybe some things still bind me to the city. Just don’t get sappy on me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” John said.

“Good. Because I’m not going to be sappy either; that would be pathetic.” It moved closer to them, perching feather-light on Rodney’s shoulder. John felt the comforting warmth of it spread out around them, taking them under its metaphorical wing.

“Look,” Rodney said, tipping his head towards the windows. “The shield’s holding.”

It looked beautiful, rain and wind and magic turning the dome of the shield into a strange and miraculous fireworks display.

John cleared his throat. He was completely burned out right now, but Rodney felt good against him and the fireworks were pretty. “That is really cool.”

“Mhm. Best seats in the house,” Rodney said, echoing John’s own words back at him. John leaned against him. Rodney leaned back; they kept upright by counterbalance.

The three of them watched the fireworks until the storm had passed.

 


	12. In which there are model airplanes

“Okay, let’s see here… Daniel, would you step into the magic circle, please?” Sam scrolled through her tablet with a wrinkle between her brows while Jack helped Daniel up on the table, since as it turned out his legs were too short for him to jump up on his own.

Daniel looked at her with his huge, sad puppy eyes. Sam made a face. “Well, here goes nothing. Three… two… one - now.”

There was a burst of bright light and then… nothing. Daniel looked down himself only to see paws.

“Okay, update - that was _not_ it either,” Sam sighed. “Back to square one.”

Daniel woofed at her accusingly.

Sam made an indignant sound. “Hey, _I’m_ not the one who put you into the body of a terrier. I’m trying to help here!”

“That is what happens when you die and get resurrected repeatedly by great yet mystic forces for as of yet ineffable reasons, I suppose. There’s bound to be a few mix-ups along the way,” Jack said philosophically.

“If it helps, you do make a most agreeable dog, Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c said.

“Glossy coat,” Jack agreed.

Daniel looked like he was considering biting all their ankles.

General Hammond came in, a look on his face like he was doubting the fabric of reality. “Gather round, everybody. I have some… news.”

Jack looked at him. “I should know better by now, really, but - could it possibly be… good news?”

“I’m not sure. Call it strange news for now.” He held up a turquoise crystal. “Someone has sent us something very… interesting.”  

Sam perked up and reached her hand out for the crystal, hooking it up to her tablet and then the projector. “‘Someone’, sir?”

“The Athosians. A small group of nomads living on the edges of the Wastes.”

“Huh. What could they possibly want us to - “

The image of a hive ship appeared on the screen.

“Well… shit,” Jack said after a while.

Everyone shared the sentiment.

 

\-------

 

John stood at the edge of the pier, looking out over the ocean. The wind was warm and salt-fresh against his face and through his hair - he felt like he’d been cold for so long that the summer finally coming back was a shock.

 _it’s kind of pretty, isn’t it_ , the city said.

“There sure is a lot of sky.”

_hand me that spade, would you?_

John gave the city’s robot hand the spade and watched as it carefully tucked earth around the fragile roots of a sapling. “They’re coming along there.”

_I think I can make a pink batch next time!_

John smiled. “The blue ones are already selling like hotcakes down at the market.”

He looked out over the rows of pots and flower beds - he was pretty sure they were gearing up to be the new seed bank for half the world’s rainforests at this point, between the hot houses in the south section of the city and all the piers. John didn’t know the name of one third of the species.

 _I’m not in it for the money_ , the city said, in its best growly moviestar voice. _I just know that no one will stand up for the hortensias if I don’t_.

“Well, our collective wallet doesn’t mind it, anyway.”

_Hm. I still need a more reliable method of pollination across the whole city if I’m to improve our production rates.  maaaaaybe -_

“No more bees in the gateroom.”

_uuuugh._

“Listen, you have the whole city at your disposal. Find somewhere else.”

_...they get lonely._

“We’ll come visit. Have tea with ‘em every now and then. How about that.” John realized to his horror that he was telling the truth. If the city had really asked him to have a tea party with bees, he wouldn’t have been able to say no. God, he was getting soft. The city must never know.

A sigh that had suffered so long that whole geological eras had passed it by. _Okay. I_ guess _._

Fred rolled around on the sun-warmed metal of the pier, little legs twitching with happiness. John closed his eyes and turned his face into the wind.

There was the sound of the door opening and some stumbling steps, and Rodney came up behind him to wrap his arms around his waist, resting his chin on John’s shoulder. “Hi.”

“Good morning. Thought you said you were right behind me two hours ago.”

Rodney yawned. “Time is relative.”

“That’s just something you physicists came up with as an excuse, isn’t it.”

“You’ll never know,” Rodney said smugly.

John hummed and took Rodney’s hand where it rested on his stomach. Rodney swayed them back and forth a little.

“When was Teyla coming by again?” Rodney asked after a while.

“Tuesday.”

“That’s nice.”

“Mhm.”

“And then I can watch her kick your ass again while you spar. That’s always a hoot.”

John spluttered indignantly, but Rodney just squeezed him close and sniggered. “Where’s the loyalty, McKay? Teyla already has her own cheerleading squad - his name is Kanaan. What do I have?”

“Hm. Someone who’s more than happy to kiss it all better?”

“Well, when you put it like _that_ …” John turned around to look at him, sleep-rumpled and bright-eyed, his hair standing up in odd tufts. “I do enjoy the kissing part.”

“I knew you’d come around to my point of view,” Rodney said smugly. “Ah, and by the way - look what I brought.” Rodney picked something up from the ground and held out the remote control to John’s model airplane - which was painted red with yellow flames that moved like the real thing due to magic paint: _cool_ \- while holding his own under his arm - sleek and black with golden spirals twisting like snakes: still pretty cool, but nowhere near as cool as John’s. He lifted an eyebrow. “Ready to be outclassed, Sheppard?”

John felt like he was flying, but he was still right here, standing in front of Rodney. He took the plane from under Rodney’s arm and put it down.

“C’mere,” he said, cupping Rodney’s face in his hands, taking a moment to look at his lopsided smile before kissing him, and it tasted like happiness. 

 

~*~

 

The model airplanes floated on warm ocean winds that carried the sound of laughter right into the horizon.

 

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go – it’s done! I know, I find it hard to believe too, but here's the ending I always wanted for John and Rodney: growing into grumpy old men yelling at the kids to get off their pier, flying model airplanes into the sunset.
> 
> I’d like to give all the thank yous in the world to Kelle and Popkin16 for beta reading this monster! This thing would never exist without you :)
> 
> For anyone who might have followed this from the very beginning: I’m REALLY SORRY and EXTREMELY GRATEFUL! You guys are the real heroes, in the end <3


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